Sermon on the Mount—Different passages in it considered—Provision for Ministers.
The Quaker objects to this whole statement: formally, to that part of it which treats of war, oaths, and punishment, and of a national provision for the spiritual body; practically, to all the principles upon which these institutions have been defended. ‘Our arguments, he says, ’may sound plausible enough to worldly men; those who take the Gospel simply, and try to form themselves according to its precepts, find them directly and in terms contradicted by the Sermon on the Mount. The highest of all authorities has said “Swear not at all;” “resist not evil;” “love your enemies.” We choose to say that the practices of statesmen, who set these precepts aside, are reasonable and religious. He has in the plainest words annulled the maxims of the old dispensation in reference to these points; it pleases us to affirm that they are still binding. But it is not in our power to make bitter sweet, or evil good, though we may call them so; men will be judged by Christ’s commands, not by our glosses upon them. Our theory however, is consistent, if not with the language of our Master, at least with our own practice. We wish worldly men to receive us into their houses; it is fitting that when they are in debt one hundred measures of wheat to their Lord we should bid them take their bills and write fourscore. If we become pensioners on the nation’s bounty, we must make the best of the nation’s sins. The Apostles followed a different rule. They lived upon the love of their flocks; they took what was cheerfully given them by those whom they served. We have not only become hirelings instead of shepherds, but we actually boast of the change, and think ill of them who will not submit to it.’
I. As the first class of these charges turns primarily upon the interpretation of the 5th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, I will enter at once into an examination of that portion of Scripture. We are accused of violating the spirit of it, of perverting the letter of it, of lowering the high standard of duty set forth in it. I shall think my case not established if I fail in bringing home each of these charges to the Quaker himself.
1. It is impossible to read the first sentences of the Sermon on the Mount, without feeling that they must be in some measure a key to its whole purpose. The series of blessings upon certain states of mind compels us to feel that we are in the presence of One who is come to establish a kingdom in the inner man; to deal with the principles of things; to lay the axe to the roots; to baptize with the Spirit and with fire; to reform the fruit by reforming the tree. We cannot help feeling, that however little worth there may be in the notion or superstition of an intended parallelism between the mountain on which the trumpet sounded long and loud, and that on which Jesus opened His mouth and spake, the principle implied in that parallelism is exactly true.
2. The words, “Ye are the salt of the earth, ye are the light of the world”—the exhortation to see that the salt possesses that quality by which it hinders putrefaction in other bodies, and do not contract their tendency to corruption; to take care that the light be not quenched by the inner darkness which it is meant to penetrate, and thus be prevented from manifesting itself outwardly to men;—these exhortations are in exact accordance with that which has preceded them, and shew forth the nature of the authority with which the new teacher spake, and which distinguished Him from the letter-hunting Scribe. In all these passages we observe, moreover, that the effects which are promised to follow from these states of mind, are of the same kind with themselves,—are distinctly spiritual effects; the poor in spirit shall understand what it is to be brought into a kingdom; the mourner shall be comforted; the meek shall have the government of the earth (shall have the joy, the greatest he can know, of making other men happy); the merciful shall obtain mercy; those that hunger and thirst after righteousness shall obtain righteousness; those that are peace-makers shall be called the children of Him who is the great Peace-maker; the pure in heart shall see God; the privilege of him who preserves the salt within him from corruption, is that he shall preserve the earth from decay; of him who keeps the light alive within him, that men shall glorify their Father which is in heaven. I am anxious to make this remark, because it is my object to shew how carefully our Lord preserves the characteristics of His kingdom, and its rewards, from all secular mixtures; how He transports men into a region entirely unlike that with which they are ordinarily conversant, and yet their own native region, the region of their own true and proper being.
3. But how is this distinctness preserved? by denying the existence of a lower outward region? Is it by setting aside that lower outward region as being in itself evil and impure? Is it by absorbing all influences into the one paramount, transcendent influence? Or is it precisely by taking the opposite course to this, by recognizing the fact and reality of that outward world, by shewing how it is provided for in God’s economy, by shewing what relation it bears to the invisible and celestial atmosphere which informs and encompasses it? Our Lord’s next words answer these questions, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” It may be as well to remind the reader, since every word in this memorable passage is important, that the word ‘fulfil’ is not the same in these two verses; that it would be better to translate the last clause of the eighteenth, “until all things have been done, or have come to pass.” I suppose it is our inconvenient version which has given colour to the notion that our Lord speaks here of His own personal obedience to the law, as that which should practically abrogate it; as if He had said, “I am come to fulfil the law, and when I have fulfilled it, then indeed it may pass away; but not a jot or tittle of it till then.” But such an exposition as this, destroys the connexion of the passage with all that preceded it and all that follows it. The sentence, “Whosoever, therefore, shall destroy one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” could not have been added, if the law were spoken of as destroyed by the work of Christ; for the kingdom of heaven is that kingdom which His work was to establish. Our Lord must therefore use the word fulfil in its most strict and ordinary sense; He must mean, that He is come to give that which fills up the husk of the outward law, its kernel, its substance. He must mean further, that this kernel or substance will not destroy the husk; that that will remain still in all its dryness and literalness; not one jot or tittle of its enactments abolished, not one jot or tittle of its authority diminished, until all things be done, or have come into their perfect estate and condition; till formal law have lost its application to the universe, because its meaning and spirit are accomplished in every human creature. Till heaven and earth have passed away, till the whole existing economy of things have ceased, so long as there is any evil to be prevented in it, so long as there is flesh in any man which is not subject to the will of God,—so long law in its outward character must exist; and he is the least in the kingdom of heaven, he has least spiritual intuition, who shall try to abridge it of its precepts or its terrors.
4. Thus far everything in this sermon of our Lord would seem to negative the opinion, that He came to repeal one set of rules, and establish another. Everything would seem to shew, that He came to confirm rules existing before: to shew the ground, the inward righteousness of these rules; and to lead those who were willing to be His disciples into the possession and enjoyment of it. The next words greatly strengthen this conclusion: “Verily I say unto you, Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” There are but two ways of interpreting this passage. The one treats the righteousness required of the disciples as something different in degree from that of the Scribes and Pharisees; the other as different in kind. If the former notion be adopted, then, indeed, it will follow inevitably, that our Lord comes to set aside the decrees of the Mosaic law, and to establish another set of stricter decrees, more difficult to be complied with, in their place. And no doubt there is a feeling, indicated in this way of considering these words, which ought not to be despised. It is so common to believe that the Christian economy is a system of mitigations and allowances, mainly valuable because it dispenses with troublesome restrictions upon self-indulgence, that it is no wonder honest men should be startled into a violent reaction against this notion, and should be eager to press all Scripture into a proof that the requirements of the perfect dispensation are really higher and severer than those of the imperfect. But, after rendering full honour to the truth implied in this exposition, we are bound to say, that its fruits have been most pernicious; that it has turned the Christian race into a selfish contest who should gain most of the rewards of a future state; that it has wholly blinded men to the nature and quality of these rewards; that it has destroyed all high, pure, disinterested morality; that while it has depraved the principles of those who seemed to be aiming at the highest ends, it has done infinite injury to the practice of those who were content with lower achievements, in making them suppose that there is not a universal standard to which all men must be conformed, but a peculiar standard, which men may choose for themselves; that it has been the parent of useless superstition, ecclesiastical oppression, on the one hand, and of utterly lax and reckless habits on the other; in fine, that it has more utterly contradicted the whole scope and meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, than any other opinion which has prevailed in the Christian world. We are driven, then, to the other, which is the interpretation of all good commentators—that the righteousness which exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, is one which is spiritual and not literal, the conformity of the life and character to the original mould after which all outward laws are fashioned, the pattern on the Mount, and not the mere conformity of conduct to any precepts. And, seeing that the Pharisees notoriously had the idea of supererogation, seeing that they did themselves suggest to their disciples a more exalted righteousness than that of the multitude, nay, that their sect was based upon the profession of such a righteousness,—we might expect our Lord to shew the difference between this sort of superlative morality and His own; we might expect to find Him shewing how the one actually set aside the law in attempting to refine upon it, how the other sustained the law while impregnating it with a new life; we might expect to find Him shewing that every attempt to adapt or modify the law, for the purpose of reforming and exalting the inner life, was utterly hopeless, because it existed for quite another purpose; because the principle to which it was the finger-post was something quite different from the mere exterior command, and could not be extracted from it by any twisting of its formulas. But we should certainly not expect to find Him, after so many cautions, after so careful a declaration of His object, undertaking to annul any of the precepts, which He was not to destroy but to fulfil, or introducing any new legal dogmas instead of them, when He came to bring in a righteousness that is above all dogmas.
5. Let us see, then, whether He disappoints our anticipations in this respect, or whether every passage which follows is not a clear, consistent, and beautiful illustration of the preface. “Ye have heard that it has been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” What consequences would follow if we supposed that the formula, “It has been said by them of old time, but I say,” meant in this case, “I am about to tell you something which annuls or abolishes what has been said of old time”? In that case the expressions, “He that says to his brother, Raca,” “he that says, Thou fool,” must be taken in just the same formal and legal sense in which the words, “Thou shalt not kill” are taken. Words which are meant to supersede and abrogate other words, must be construed as they would be construed. If the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” points to a definite, specific proceeding, the words, Thou shalt not give this name to thy brother, must point to a specific, definite proceeding also. Now, who does not see what a shameful limitation of these sublime precepts, what low superstition, what vile hypocrisy must be the result of such an interpretation as this? And who does not know that men have actually fallen into all these evils through the attempt to ascertain what exact amount of slander and vituperation in their own language answered to the Greek raca, and the Syriac Raca, and in what degree of danger they therefore were of the judgment, the council, and hell fire? If these doubts and cases of conscience have only now and then expressed themselves in this monstrous form; yet it is easy, from many indications, to perceive that they have been haunting the sin-darkened minds of men, and that they would have haunted them much more, if there had not been teachers to tell them, “These words are not addressed to your outward, but to your inward ear; the words ‘Raca,’ and ‘Thou fool,’ are merely significant indexes of certain states of mind; the anger without a cause, is the commencement of the disease; it has become chronic when it finds vent in words of fury; it has become radical, it has infected the vitals of your constitution, when it finds vent in words of settled scorn. The first state of mind subjects you to a judgment; you experience separation from God and man; you cannot feel with the congregation; you cannot pray to your Father. This condition of mind may pass away, if ‘thou agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him;’ if the accounts between thee and thy conscience (thy adversary) are settled, which thou knowest that they cannot be till the outward account with thy brother is settled too. But take care that thou do not let it harden into the second condition,—that will subject thee to the council—a more complete thorough alienation from all heavenly feelings, all peaceful hopes, all capacity of entering into communion with God. Still God’s discipline may work a cure of this also; but there is a period when all discipline has been tried in vain; when the sentence on the soul is, ‘Let it alone,’ then must it be left to those raging and consuming fires, which could not be quenched by the love of God, of which the fires burning without the city of Jerusalem, to consume its rubbish and its offal, are the only sufficient emblems.”
Such is the meaning, so spiritual and so awful, which we are allowed to put on our Lord’s words, while we feel that they belong to us in our highest, most responsible, and most perilous condition of immortal and spiritual beings, taken into covenant with God, brought into fellowship with our brethren, submitted to the government and education of His Holy Spirit. Such is the meaning which we must abandon, in favour of some barren, hungry interpretation, fretting to the conscience, profitless to the heart, the moment we forget our Lord’s words, that He came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it; the moment we permit ourselves to imagine that His work was to substitute one formal precept for another, and not rather to stanch the fountain of evil in the heart, whence had proceeded all those crimes against which the outward law was the true and permanent witness.
6. The next two passages refer to the Marriage bond; one to the prohibition of Adultery by the law, the other to its toleration of Divorce. In the first case the meaning is evident. Our Lord comes not to destroy, but to fulfil. He leaves the precept against adultery as He finds it, and stamps it with new authority. Still it belongs to the ‘old time.’ He has a message to the inner man. He aims not at the crime, but at the sin. “Look not upon a woman to lust after her;” “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out;” “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” Willing to sacrifice the exercise of powers which God meant thee to exercise, the enjoyments of sense which God has given thee, if thou findest them to minister to thy inward corruption, and so to hinder thee from attaining the higher joys of the spiritual kingdom. For it is better to enter into life halt and maimed, to have the spirit itself pure and free, at the cost of some of its tools and ministers, than having two hands and two feet, having all thy powers and thy senses at liberty, to be cast into hell-fire, to be consumed by tyrant lusts, and an ever-renewing remorse. This is the very principle and illustration of inward spiritual discipline.
The next clause is, at first sight, more puzzling. Our Lord seems to be repealing the Mosaic law of divorce, though He expressly disclaimed the intention of repealing any jot of it. But, if we consider a moment, we shall perceive that there is no inconsistency. The Law of Moses was not meant to encourage divorces. It was meant to throw obstacles in their way. For the Jew, instead of being allowed to send away his wife whenever he conceived a displeasure against her, was obliged to resort to a legal instrument; he must have a bill of divorcement. Thus much the law could do to witness for the sanctity of marriage. More it could not do, because of the hardness of heart in those with whom it had to deal. Prohibitory or penal enactments could not of themselves preserve that primal law of creation which God established, when He made them male and female. To fulfil the end which they wish to compass, the new dispensation exhibits marriage as a lower form and image of its greatest mystery, imparting to it a sacred and only not sacramental dignity.
7. And now we are come to one of the points of dispute between us and the Quaker. “It has been said by them of old time, Ye shall not forswear yourselves, but ye shall perform unto the Lord your oaths; but I say unto you, Swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne, neither by the earth, for it is His footstool, neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King, nor by your head, for you cannot make one hair of it white or black.”
Now, I do not say that the Quaker may not be able to prove that this passage forbids all oaths, judicial and religious, as well as vituperative and conversational. But I do say, that this is not the view of the text which would suggest itself to any literal interpreter who reads the whole sermon, and seeks to interpret one part of it by another. No literal interpreter could treat with indifference the repetition of the formula, “It hath been said by them of old time, but I say unto you,” or, without the strongest reason, could affix an opposite meaning to it in one place from that which it evidently bears in three others. No literal interpreter could disregard the circumstance, that not one of the oaths which our Lord instances as illustrative of His prohibition is a judicial oath; that every one of them is just the kind of oath which, from the analogy of other nations, we should suppose would be used in familiar discourse. No literal interpreter would be heedless of the circumstance, that the communication (λόγος), which is to be yea, yea, nay, nay, cannot, without a most strange use of language, imply a formal, legal procedure. While, therefore, I am far from assuming that the Quakers may not be able to overreach all these à priori arguments against their view of the passage, I maintain that they have not the shadow of a plea for putting themselves forward as strict interpreters, and for denouncing our laxness. They are bound to shew some cause why our Lord should in this instance have violated the method and coherency of His discourse; why He should introduce this instance of an old law, in seeming illustration of His principle, “that He has not come to destroy but to fulfil,” when it is a direct exception from that principle; why He should have connected it, by the use of a common phrase, with two other cases, which did most remarkably enforce and expound it.
The only effort, so far as I know, which they make to defend their theory against these apparently powerful presumptions, consists in such assertions as these: “That the words, ‘Swear not at all,’ are clear and obvious words, spoken for the use of poor and ignorant people, by one who came to preach the Gospel to the poor; that, let commentators say what they will, any ordinary man taking up the Bible, and finding such a command as this, would suppose it to govern all possible cases, and not a few particular cases; that it is impossible to discover any line of moral distinction between an oath in private, and an oath in a court of justice; and, lastly, that the prohibition of private, conversational swearing was superfluous,—no one in old time, or in any time, supposed that to be lawful.” With respect to the first of these arguments, I shall not stop to inquire with what grace it comes from those who have particularly prided themselves on the discovery of meanings in Scripture, which do not present themselves to the ordinary, thoughtless reader, but which commend themselves, as they say, to the spiritual man. I do not ask whether they are just the persons to complain of us for not adopting the most superficial, outside view of a passage which presents itself; but I at once grapple with the difficulty. I take an ordinary English peasant, possessing just so much intelligence and religious feeling as makes him capable of attaching any meaning at all to the passage; I say that such a man would not be nearly so likely to suppose that our Lord meant him to abstain from judicial oaths, because he said “Swear not at all,” as he would be to think that our Lord meant him to injure some of his members, because He said, “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Not nearly so likely, and for this reason, that he would have a practical test of the meaning in the one case, which he would not have in the other. This peasant knows perfectly well, that the feeling with which he goes into a solemn court of justice, and in the presence of men in solemn official costume, calls God to witness that the words he is about to speak are true, is as different a feeling from that by which he is influenced when he takes the same holy name into his lips, to confirm some chance word which he has uttered over his cups in the tap-room, as any two that ever dwelt in the same individual can possibly be. It would never occur to him for an instant to compare the two acts together, except, indeed, in this way:—he has seen, that the persons who are most in the habit of using oaths, and trifling with the name of God in common conversation, are those on whom an oath judicially administered has least effect, and who are most likely to forswear themselves. If, then, it is meant that the real wayfaring man will be particularly likely to discover any perplexity or contradiction here, I believe it is a mistake; I do not say that he may not, because I do not say that he may not be perplexed with any passage of Scripture. I have urged already, that a personal ministry is just as necessary to him, and has been just as much appointed for him, as the Written Word itself, and that one is not in general intended to profit him without the other. All, therefore, that I need maintain here is, that my view of the passage, when it is set before him, instead of seeming to be more difficult, more contrary to his previous expectations, will be much more intelligible, and much better interpret to him his own experience. For instance; to a congregation of English countrymen I should speak, with the most perfect confidence that what I said would approve itself to their hearts and understandings, some such words as these:
“My friends, the assizes are to be held to-morrow in the county town, three miles from our village. Some of you are summoned to be witnesses there; now, that you may understand what you have to do, and in what spirit you ought to go about this work, I shall explain to you this morning a passage out of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. You know I have told you very often that the Bible is not a show-book, written about things which have nothing to do with you, but one that concerns all your common business and tells you how to set about it in a right way. Well, then, attend to this passage. It begins so:—‘It hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but thou shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths.’ Now, first, you would like to know who it is that said this in old time. If you look back a few verses in this chapter, you will see it is written, ‘It has been said of old time, Thou shalt not kill;’ and again, a few verses lower, ‘It has been said of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ These commands were given of old time to the Jews. You know who gave them. Just now I was reading them to you from the altar, and before them all I read, ‘God spake these words and said;’—God declared Himself to the Jews as their King, and He told them amidst thunders and lightnings that these laws were His laws; that when they broke any of these laws they disobeyed Him, and that misery and destruction would follow. I have often talked to you about the history of the Jews. You know they tried whether it was true or not that misery and destruction would follow if they broke God’s commands; they tried, and found that it was true. Misery did follow, till at last they were sent away into a strange land. Well! as God commanded the Jews not to kill and not to commit adultery, so He commanded them not to forswear themselves, but to perform unto Him their oaths. Our Lord, you see, puts the same honour upon all these commands. He speaks of each of them as ‘what was spoken in old time;’ that is to say, what God spake of old time to His people, and what they had preserved as His commands. And I tell you, my friends, that if the Jews had forgotten this command, they would have been just as ill off as if they had forgotten either of the others. They were held together as a people by having God’s name put upon them; therefore, when they came together as a people, to have any solemn transactions with each other, they were bound to remember that they were in God’s presence; that God was looking on their words and intentions; and that He would be avenged on them if they did not act honestly by each other. An oath in a court of justice says this, ‘We are in God’s presence, and we know He is a witness whether we speak truth or lies, and He is a God of truth, and will be avenged upon us if we speak lies.’ If the Jews had forgotten that they were to perform unto the Lord their oaths; if the rulers of the land had not enforced oaths upon them, they would have been guilty of a great sin; they would have refused to bear witness for God, as He told them to bear witness of Him; and I say again, it would have fared as ill with them, the nation would as much have fallen to pieces (because there would have been no fear of God, no feeling that He was near them), as if they had committed murder or adultery. Yea, what is more, they would have committed murder and adultery, because the thought of God, which keeps men out of these courses, would have departed from them. Now, my friends, our nation of England acknowledges God for its King, just as much as the nation of the Jews did. We call Him, in our prayer for Queen Victoria, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’ Just as He was the King over King David, so He is the King over our Queen. And our laws which say, ‘Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery,’ are God’s laws; they are not the Queen’s laws; she did not make them, nor any king or queen that was before her. She and her servants execute them, and she and they are answerable to God how they execute them. But they were made of old time,—God made them, and God enforces them; and we are to perform all our transactions as in His presence, knowing that He is the witness of what we do. And our rulers are bound to tell us this; to put us in mind of it, and on all solemn occasions, when we meet as in a court of justice, they must urge us to say out boldly, that we know and feel that the eye of the unseen God is upon us, and upon what we do, and upon what we say, and upon what we think. Remember this when the book is put into your hands to swear; remember that you are declaring then, in that court, that God’s eye is upon you, and that you believe He will teach you to speak truth, and that you believe He will be avenged upon you if you lie. But I have something more to say to you yet. I have told you often, that all the laws in the world will never make us good men. They are ‘a terror to evil-doers, and a praise and protection to them that do well.’ But they will never put one right thought into your heart, they will never make your heart pure and holy. The laws cannot, but He who gave the laws can; and this is what the second part of our Lord’s words is about. He says, ‘It has been said by them of old time,’ (that is, in other words, I, the Lord Jesus Christ, said in old time, for it was He who gave the law, He was King then, He now),
‘Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but thou shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. But I am not going to tell you this again. It has been said once, and it lasts always. I have now a new message to you. There are some of you who think that you must be very careful of using the word God in your familiar talk, because God hath set apart that for solemn purposes; but you do not think much of swearing by heaven, or earth, or by Jerusalem, or by your head,—you do not care how lightly you use these oaths. Now, whether you know it or not, this arises from want of reverence for God. You think it is just the name that is sacred. Oh, no! Everything is sacred. Look up to the wide heaven over your head; the sun speaks of God, the moon speaks of Him, the firmament speaks of Him—Look at the earth; every tree, and plant, and flower speaks of Him. Go into Jerusalem: there is the Temple in which God has promised to dwell. Think of your own head; there is a witness for God; it is He who preserves every hair of it. I say, then, Swear not at all. If you trifle with an oath, you trifle with God, in whose presence you are living, and moving, and having your being.’
“My friends, these are the words of Christ’s new covenant. They were not spoken to the disciples only, they are spoken to you who are under this covenant. You are baptized men, children of God, members of Christ, heirs of heaven. Christ has other, better, higher, more acceptable words for you than those which He spoke in old time. He tells you that He has brought you into God’s immediate presence, that He has adopted you into His family, that He has sealed you with His Spirit. He beseeches you to remember that you have this high honour, this unspeakable glory; and therefore He says to the heart of each one of you, ‘Swear not at all.’ When thou goest forth to thy work in the morning, look cheerily and reverently up to heaven and say,—‘That sky under which I am to labour to-day is my Father’s throne; it is a holy thing; I must not trifle with it. This earth, which I am to till with the sweat of my brow, is my Father’s footstool; He cares for it; He causes it to bud and bring forth: this, too, is a holy thing.’ When you go into the town to market, look up at the churches and say,—‘This, too, is my Father’s dwelling-place; these are witnesses that I am a citizen of the New Jerusalem, that I belong to an innumerable company of saints and angels, and that all these men who are about me are of the same family. The city and the men in it are holy.’ When you return home at night, and lie down on your bed, and no one else is near you, think that ‘in this body of mine God hath said He will dwell, and make it His temple: this, too, is a holy thing.’
“Yes! it is your privilege as Christians, to have these calm, happy thoughts wherever you go, whatever you are doing. These are the thoughts of new men, who believe themselves redeemed to God by the blood of Christ. Think how contrary to them every idle oath is! What pride there is in it! What contempt of God! What setting up of ourselves! And, in general, what cruelty to our brethren! Depend upon it, every such oath makes men feel God’s oaths less sacred, makes men more likely to forswear themselves when they are sworn in a court of justice. If you think it would be very horrible to commit such a crime—if you wish to obey Christ’s first command, ‘Perform unto the Lord thy oaths;’ see that you attend to His second command, by not swearing at all in your communications one with another; see that you get the spirit of these commands into you, by remembering at all times, in all places, that you are in the presence of a Father who loves you, and that all things testify of Him. Then you may go to court to-morrow with free, clear spirits; you will not have to think as slaves and cowards think—‘I must not tell a lie, for then I shall be prosecuted for perjury, or be turned out of my place, or be pointed at by other people’—but you will speak the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, because God is truth, and because you know that they who tell lies cannot stand in His sight; but that every true-hearted servant and child of His He will help and bless, and bring them on farther and farther in the knowledge of Himself.”
I think there is nothing in this which a plain man would reject as unintelligible, or an honest man as sophistical. It marks out a great moral distinction between two acts, which Quakers have hastily confounded together, merely because they have a common name. It shews that there was a reason for giving this command against conversational swearing in this place; for though the Jews had not argued that they might trifle with oaths because they were directed to use them on the most solemn and sacred occasions, —that was a subtlety which never suggested itself to their minds, ingenious as they were in finding a plea for their evil practices by a tortured application of the letter of the law, they had persuaded themselves that, if they abstained from the dreadful name of Jehovah, they did not invade the awfulness of oaths by using them familiarly. And in striking at this hypocritical notion, our Lord was able to throw a new and brilliant light upon His own dispensation, to shew how it was that He came to bring men into the very presence of God, to hallow every place with His presence, and to bind together the awful feeling of a distinct personality, an unutterable name, which had possessed the heart of the Hebrew with that feeling of a God everywhere, which had been struggling with it in the conceptions of the Greek Pantheist. This prohibition was not a superfluous thing for that time, or for any time. It associates a rule of daily life with the most deep principles of our being. Adopt the Quaker notion of the passage, and our Lord says, in a sermon especially addressed to the hearts and consciences of men,—“Once, without a reason, I told you to do a certain act, now, without a reason, I tell you not to do that act.” Adopt our view of it, and we see the eternal grounds of these precepts in two principles, alike involved in the constitution of man, each developed in its due season, (one by the teacher who had the veil over his countenance, the other by Him who came to shew forth the express Image of God in human flesh,) each to be upheld for the sake of the other, each losing its own stability when the other is forgotten.
8. The Quakers, and those who adopt their theory respecting the Sermon on the Mount, make scarcely any distinction between the two following paragraphs. The two old sayings, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy,” are taken to be proverbs of nearly the same import, expressing generally the savage character of the ancient dispensation, for which Christ substitutes the mild spirit of the new. Surely that interpretation must be intrinsically vicious, which confounds together two maxims, as different in their objects and application as any that ever were expressed in human language. The first manifestly applies to the judicial proceedings of the commonwealth, the second to its external relations. Whether good or evil, barbarous or gentle, they do not mean the same thing; and every person who really wishes to interpret our Lord’s words strictly, will examine them separately.
To begin with the words, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
The feeling of retribution and compensation, that every injury should have its just recompense, that the evil suffered shall be proportionate to the evil done,—you see working in the heart of every savage, you see secretly prompting and justifying his acts of blind fury and punishment. To be sure he constantly passes the limit; he makes the satisfaction exacted far exceed the wrong committed, and for that excess his conscience reproaches him. Confused as his perceptions are, you may make him acknowledge that it was an evil spirit which drove him to take more than the equivalent; but it is in vain to urge him farther; I believe it is not right to urge him farther; it is tasking his conscience to a work for which it is not prepared; it is making him doubt the reality of its testimony, so far as it goes. And why is this? Why is a man who really approaches his brother’s soul with fear and trembling, knowing what an awful thing it is; knowing how wicked it is to displace one true, sound conviction in it; knowing that most tenderness is necessary where the good is weakest, least guarded, most surrounded with contradictory elements,—why is such a man careful of impairing or destroying this idea of adjustment and retribution in the heart of a savage? Because he believes that every transgression does and must receive its just recompense of reward; because the absence of all sense of this truth in the savage mind, would indicate the absence of all feeling of a law; because the presence of it may be the means of leading him on to the acknowledgment of his own subjection to law. It is then, I conceive, the very essence of a lawgiver’s duty to take this principle of God’s government, which each man is feeling after and clutching at, and making the excuse for acts of violence, (acts that keep alive, aggravate, and harden into a habit, the inward hatred which conspired with this right feeling to produce them),—to take this principle, I say, and make it the rule of his own proceedings, and by strictly enforcing it, lead men to feel that there is a power ruling over them, which redresses the wrong that each has so impotently and mischievously endeavoured to redress for himself. It is the business of the lawgiver to say, “You are all members of one body; the law cares for each of you distinctly; it feels every wrong inflicted upon every one of you as a wrong to itself; it will require from every man who injures another man, that he shall make compensation and satisfaction for that evil which he has done. It proposes to itself this end, and will endeavour, as far as it can, to reach it,—of making every wrong-doer feel that he suffers in that kind, and to that degree, in which he has offended.”
I maintain, then, that the principle, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” is a principle which lies at the foundation of a State, and perhaps more than any other, explains to us what a State is. It is a righteous principle, I had almost called it the righteous principle; for it is that which presents to us the most complete image of the order and moral government of the world; it most exhibits the rights of each distinct person, in connexion with that order and government. Vengeance must be somewhere—“It is mine, saith the Lord;” and the State is that which teaches each man that there is a Lord, an invisible ruler, and judge, and governor over him, whose authority he is bound to acknowledge, and upon whose authority every act of private vengeance is an infringement.
Thus much the law can do, and, what is more, nothing but a law can do it. No spiritual principle, acting upon the life of man, reforming and regenerating his heart and will, can bear this witness for a God who punishes wrong-doing, can bring men into an apprehension of the system of retribution which is established in the universe. If we have not a power distinctly standing out and saying, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” “As you have done so shall it be rendered to you again,”—distinctly standing out, I say, and embodying this principle in acts of regular, anticipated, proportionate punishment, there is nothing in the secret operations for moulding the character of a man into the Divine image, to suggest the belief that man is actually subjected to such a Divine government. When these operations are exclusively regarded, all feelings respecting God are absorbed into the one, that He is the renewer and sanctifier of our lives; the belief of Him as a judge, which is in fact the belief of His personality, is in hazard of being lost altogether. On the other hand, it is equally certain, that this law, with its scale of retributions, cannot approach the heart and spirit of any man, cannot go one step towards producing that tone of feeling which yet it shews to be most necessary. The law may say to a man, “Vengeance is mine, vengeance is the Lord’s; all acts of individual vengeance shall be themselves accounted crimes;” it may even do much to convince a man that his private fury is a very inconvenient thing for himself as well as his neighbour, that it is a monstrous outrage upon the order of society; but it can do nothing towards taking the principle and desire of vengeance out of man. It cannot make cheerful citizens, with minds recognizing its righteousness and delighting therein; it cannot even provide against the outbreaks which the will of man, rising superior to the rules of his understanding, is continually producing. To hinder these, it must resort to some spiritual influence, and this spiritual influence may be of three kinds:—It may be mere discipline, such as was adopted in Sparta; discipline excluding education, compelling all the faculties and energies of the spirit into one direction, making them consciously feeble and helpless when they venture into any other. It may be an education of the calculating faculty merely, a skilful experiment to destroy every thought and feeling which interferes with the hope of direct and tangible advantage; but this experiment is possible only in a thoroughly enervated age, and possible then only for a short time. Lastly, it may be that kind of spiritual influence which acts directly upon the will, which despoils it of its selfishness, which conforms it to the perfect will of God. To employ this influence, the lawgiver must seek the aid of Him who said, “Resist not the evil;” “if any man will take thy cloak, let him have thy coat also;” and who, in saying these words, shewed that “He was not come to destroy but to fulfil the law”—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Thus, then, we come back upon our old doctrine. I say that the law protests against the selfish, individual principle, and raises a standard against it; and I say that the Gospel comes to exterminate that same selfish principle out of the mind and heart of the man. Upon the same ground, therefore, that I hold tribunals for the rectification of social evils to be of godlike institution, and to carry Divine authority with them, I hold the principle to be godlike, and carrying Divine authority, “that whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, thou shalt turn to him the other also.” The most patient endurance of private wrongs and indignities, the most entire willingness to abstain from any acts of recrimination, or even of self-justification, are parts of the Christian character, after which, I conceive, every Christian should seek, and without which he should feel that his profession is maimed and imperfect, that he is not acting out the idea of his baptism. No toleration of selfishness in himself will he for one moment plead for, but be most anxious that all indications of it in him should be detected and exposed, in order that the thing itself may be exterminated. He has no fear of carrying out our Lord’s commands too far, and thus sacrificing his civil duties to his Christian. The law will not thank him the least for being litigious; he does not confirm its authority by turning it to his private advantage; but just so far as he communicates any portion of his spirit to the world, (and he knows that the higher his standard and his practice are, the more of that spirit he will communicate,) so much better will the law be observed, with so much more of cheerful reverence will all its subjects behold it. Observe, however, it is a principle to which he is binding himself, not a rule. He determines, by God’s help, that he will never resist evil for a selfish purpose, because he knows this to be our Lord’s meaning. He does not say that he will not resist evil; for if he did, he would say that he would not be like his Lord, whose whole life on earth, and whose whole life in His members, is a constant resistance to evil. He determines not to go to law to avenge himself, or get himself profit: he does not determine that he will not go to law, if the dignity of law be assailed by some illegal power. It is most mischievous to think that there can be the least departure from a great principle of morality; it is most ridiculous to affirm that the most opposite methods may not at times be necessary to uphold that principle. When Hampden resisted ship money, I think he complied far better with our Lord’s precept than if he had paid the tax; for he was sacrificing his own interest for the sake of the dignity of law, not using the law for the promotion of his own interest. The conscience of mankind recognizes the distinction, (in cases where private interests do not interfere,) as most broad and palpable; and the conscience of each man, guided by the Spirit of God, and seeking light from the Word of God, will be able to carry it out into daily practice, when private interests do interfere. Thus we allege this case also as an illustration of our Lord’s fundamental proposition, that He does not destroy but fulfil.
There is one remark which I would make as introductory to our consideration of the next passage, the last which concerns our present subject. It is, that the whole argument against war, so far as it is gathered from this sermon, or, I might add, from the New Testament, must turn upon it. After what I have just said, it is obvious that no attempt to extract a condemnation of war, or any allusion to it from the words, “Resist not evil,” “He that smiteth you on one cheek,” &c., can be successful. The application of the new doctrine must be determined by the application of the old; if “the eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth,” refers to judicial proceedings, the words, be they of repeal, or of confirmation, must point in the same direction; and it is most manifest torturing of their letter, and a gross perversion of their spirit, to connect them with another class of cases, which our Lord has himself treated of indistinctly. Let it be clearly understood then, that the words on which the question turns are these:—“It hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?”
There is one other observation that may also be necessary for the satisfactory examination of the question. The words which our Lord attributes to the men of old time, do not appear, totidem literis, in the Old Testament scripture. Hence it has been urged, that in this particular passage a traditional maxim of the Scribes—a gloss, probably, on some text in the books of Moses—may be denounced, and not a dogma carrying with it the authority of inspiration. I must think that the commentator who can deliberately avail himself of this subterfuge, has not yet learned that honesty and plain dealing are as much required in criticism as in the affairs of common life. He does not find the words in any text of the Bible. Does he not find the meaning in a hundred? Can he read the five books of Moses, the Kings and Chronicles, above all the Psalms, and say that if a scribe invented this phrase, he did not very happily embody in it the feeling of the old time, or that our Lord does not evidently sanction his representation of it?
But, leaving this phrase for the present, let us observe the ground on which our Lord bases his new precept. “That ye may be the children of your Father in heaven, for He causes His sun to shine upon the good and the evil, and sendeth His rain upon the just and the unjust.” Here we perceive at once the whole principle of God’s dispensations. To restore the Divine image in man is the end of these, and therefore every precept or command to man is connected with a revelation of something in the character of God. He is not required to exhibit any qualities in himself which have not first been presented to him in their original and archetype. This doctrine being assumed, we may deduce two or three corollaries from it. First, we see that a precept of universal love to men, and especially of love to them in their character as sinners, could not be delivered except in the way of hint and preparation, till there had been that complete manifestation of God in the person of His incarnate and dying Son, as connected with all men, feeling for men in their present condition, caring for the most vile and abject. Secondly, that every previous duty imposed upon men, as a test of their faithfulness and obedience, must have corresponded to something in the character of God which had been made known to them. Thirdly, that since these two revelations of God’s character cannot contradict each other, since the qualities attributed to Him must in some sense or other be compatible, the corresponding duties required in men cannot be contradictory, must in some sense or other be compatible. Fourthly, that unless one of these revelations of God can be shewn to merge in the other, so that all the qualities attributed to Him in the first shall be actually, if not apparently, contained in the second, the duties founded upon these separate revelations cannot be merged in each other, but must continue distinct obligations. A very few words will be sufficient to illustrate each of these points, and shew you their application to the subject in hand. In the first, it is distinctly admitted that Christ came to establish a universal dispensation, which did not exist previously; that this dispensation is grounded upon a manifestation of God as absolute, universal love; upon the fact that He has entered into relations in the person of His Son with man as he is; and that to men so united to His own Son, He gives His Spirit, that they may be endowed with that same universal love which is His own essential nature, and which has been displayed in the acts and sufferings of a real man. This revelation and this command lie at the foundation of the Christian Church; this is expressed in our baptism, “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” They who enter into this state are bound to love their enemies, are bound to love all men, because they see that God loves all; they love those who hate and persecute them, because for these enemies and persecutors Christ died. They love even the enemies of God, because they regard them as creatures still bearing the flesh which Christ bore, not yet finally separated from Him, not deserted by His Spirit. They keep the command given in His Sermon on the Mount strictly, fully, spiritually, for the reason which the Lawgiver Himself lays down, because they “are the children of their Father in heaven.”
Our second corollary affirms, that every duty enforced upon the Jews as a proof of their zeal and faithfulness was grounded upon some declaration of the character of God. God is declared to be the King over the Israelites, to watch over them, to care for them as a father careth for his children. They are His chosen nation, His appointed witnesses; therefore they are to care for each other. They are to feel themselves members of a nation distinct from other nations; they are to feel for each other as they do not feel for other men; for they are called to a distinct office, they have a distinct position, which it is a sin for them not to maintain—“they are to love their neighbours.” Again, God is revealed to them as carrying on a war against evil in the world, and upholding the law and order which He has established. In performing this work, He sends judgments upon nations, sweeping away by pestilence and famine whole multitudes; vindicating the truth and order, which are the only happiness of mankind, at the expense of the lives of individual men. He requires of His chosen people that they should feel as He feels; that they should hate violations of law and order as He hates them; that they should be ready to be the executors of His purposes; to maintain the principles of order and truth; to be avenged of those who violate them; not to shrink from the sacrifice of individual life, sacred and awful as it is, for the sake of maintaining that without which life is a mere miserable lie. They are to look upon their nation as established for this very end; to be a witness against evil; to carry on a warfare within and without against those who break down landmarks, set up might against right, turn the world into a wilderness, denying righteousness, denying God. It was not always to be fighting; its witness was oftentimes to be a silent one; but there were occasions when it was to draw the sword and fling away the scabbard; at all times it was to maintain its own God-given position; it was to resist the invaders of the land until the death, unless, indeed, a time should come in its history, an awful time, such as did actually arrive in the days of the prophet Jeremiah when it was a witness for God no longer; when to resist the invader was merely to assert the continuance of a self-willed power, which had thrown off the Divine yoke; when allegiance was dissolved, society at an end; when it was a duty in each man to surrender, that he might have his life for a prey. But so long as the nation was a nation, so long as it owned God and God owned it, the maxim, “Thou shalt hate thine enemy,” expressed a duty as real, as binding as the other to which it was appended, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour.”
Our third corollary affirms, that the revelation of God as universal love is not inconsistent with that prior revelation of Him, as the Being who is carrying on continual strife with whatever in our world resists and opposes law and order; and that, consequently, the duty of loving our enemies, which is grounded upon the one revelation, must be in some way or other compatible with that duty of hating our enemies, which is grounded upon the other. Only think to what the idea of a Being of perfect love must reduce itself—to what it has actually reduced itself—when men have contemplated these two Divine attributes as contrary to each other. What does love become, but a weak, contemptible tolerance of that which is unlovely, a merciless mercy, which now and for ever can permit the creatures it has formed to be as sinful, that is to say, as miserable, as they will. Does not every man’s conscience vehemently resist the decree of his carnal understanding, that there is any strife between the idea of a law of love and a Being who is determined to carry that law into execution? Does not he feel, that if he parted with either side, or aspect of the character, the other would straightway become practically unintelligible? Well, and is it not the same, must it not be the same, with our judgments of ourselves and our fellow-creatures? Do we not feel that that love of good is a very paltry thing, which is not accompanied with a hatred of evil? And do we not feel that hatred of evil is a mere name, if it is not willing to go forth in acts for resisting and extinguishing evil? And do we not feel that that man has a very poor love of his kind, and of each individual man as a member of that kind, who does not regard as his enemies those who hinder the good and help forward the evil, and who does not, in that character and capacity, hate them? These are no sophistical refinements; they are the common, honest judgments of mankind, triumphing over sophistical refinement, getting through the mere resemblances of names and words into the essential resemblances of things, and thus even unconsciously justifying the ways of God, and asserting the harmony of His dispensations.
Our fourth position affirms, that unless the view of the character of God presented by the Jewish economy be comprehended in that view which is presented by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, the duties required of the Jew remain binding on the Christian, and are not swallowed up in the duties specially and characteristically appertaining to him as the heir of the New Covenant. Our Lord says, “Love your enemies, for your Father in heaven causes His sun to shine upon the good and the evil, and sendeth His rain upon the just and the unjust.” Here is a fact of His providence introduced as an illustration of His character. But there are other facts of His providence existing side by side with this, not interfering with it. He who gives rain and sunshine, sends also plagues and pestilences. These come not, indeed, to distinguish between individuals, not to determine which are good, which evil; but yet, certainly, for discipline; certainly to teach the nations the effects of indolence, intemperance, sensuality; certainly to lead them gradually to distinguish truth from falsehood, the good from the evil. If, then, these facts exist together, and exist as distinct signs of distinct though perfectly harmonious purposes in the Divine mind, men, who are meant to be the images of God, should have some way of distinctly expressing each in their own minds and procedure. Christ comes to bring men into closer connexion with God, to endow them with the power of completely fulfilling His will, to make them complete vicegerents in executing His purposes towards the world. Surely He does not come to depose them from the office of executing any part of the work to which He once called them; surely, if He does not cease to judge and to punish, because He admits all into His kingdom of love, neither can it be meant that they should cease to judge and punish under Him, because He has appointed them under Him to publish His Gospel, and open the doors of His kingdom. And the only remaining question is, How can both these forms of character be at once preserved? How can these two sets of duties, apparently so opposite, be fulfilled? Clearly, there is the greatest danger in omitting either; there is the greatest danger in confusing them. What weak, ineffectual lovers we are, when love is separated from law, we have hinted at already; what monstrous perverters of the Divine law when we set up law against love, it requires no words to explain. But, do we fare much better if we try to keep up a balancing system in our minds? Not too much love, lest you should grow lax—not too much law, lest you should become cruel. Will this kind of see-saw satisfy any man who wishes to be honest to himself and his fellow-creatures? Not too much love! How can there be too much, if dying for love was not too much? Not too much law! How can there be too much, if the destruction of cities and empires, yea, of a world, for the sake of it was not too much? Then, I say, if it be so, there must be some distinct Divine scheme for asserting the dignity and glory of each; for upholding love in its fulness lest law should perish; for upholding law in its fulness lest love should perish. By acting in concert with each of them, a man shall find that the feeling of God’s universal love in himself does not clash with the feeling of God’s eternal and unchangeable law; that his perception of his own duties, inward and external, and of the perfect compatibleness of those which seem most opposed, waxes clearer and clearer; and, by refusing to act in concert with each of these schemes, he shall find one set of duties continually interfering with another, the peculiar temper of his mind determining which he shall prefer, which neglect. The words, then, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy,” are not destroyed but fulfilled by the words, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you.”
The reasons of my difference with the Quaker, I hope, are now sufficiently explained. I do not contend for any abatement in the strictness of his views, I only want them to be less narrow. I do not wish him to have a less spiritual conception of Christian morality, I want him not practically to exhaust it of its spirit by depriving it of its body. Above all, I want him to perceive that the scheme which he has set up in the world for the purpose of establishing peace and charity in it, is a far less effectual one than the scheme which God has set up in it for the same end. The Quaker’s society has contained self-denying and brave men, who have borne witness for the truth that we are not to resist evil, but when we are smitten on one cheek to turn the other also. Such men must have done good. Everyone who lets the world see that selfishness is not his law, that he can obey a principle, that the arm of God is more to be trusted than the arm of flesh, will certainly do good. But there is nothing to hinder the Catholic Church from bearing such testimonies, many in all ages have borne them. It is the other kind of Quaker testimony, his negative testimony, which seems to me of no worth at all, except so far as it may obtain some worth from its mixture with the acts I have just spoken of, nay, which in itself is seriously mischievous. There is much in the worst feelings of men, especially in our day, which sympathizes with the Quaker language respecting war and punishments. There is a cowardly shrinking from mere physical suffering, a great disposition to talk about the expensiveness of national honour, because money is a visible, honour an invisible thing: there is an unreasonable, uncharitable, and superstitious notion, that a soldier, so far as his profession is concerned, is of this world, and that a man who dies on the field of battle is necessarily less prepared for his change than one who dies in his bed. All these feelings, which have tended sadly to degrade and impoverish the mind of modern Europe, to cultivate the trade temper, to make armies what they are told they must be, and therefore to make them dangerous by depriving them of any high restraining principle, have been greatly encouraged by the tone which religious men of our day have adopted from the Quakers. What is such language doing for the promotion of permanent and universal peace? It is the greatest hindrance to any high understanding of the words, to any hopeful expectation of the thing. For whoever translates the holy name ‘Peace’ by carnal security or luxurious ease, desecrates it, and makes every scriptural application of it unmeaning. Whoever teaches civilians to love their pelf above all things, or military men to believe that they have no vocation but a murderous one, helps to make the one so weak that they must be ready to quail before any physical force, the other so wicked that they must be ready to exert it. And the loss of all national spirit will lead, as it has ever done, not to a golden age of Christian fraternization, but to a military despotism. Far otherwise, as we have seen already, has the Church of Christ worked in the world. It has been the instrument of putting down military despotism, the instrument of evoking national feeling. The sins of its ministers leading them to exalt their own position and to make it extra-national, the sins of the national rulers, in seeking to put down that spiritual power within it which seemed to interfere with their projects, have thwarted the gracious design of Providence, but they have only made the character of that design more evident. They have shewn that it is His will to establish peace; first, by creating in the heart of every nation a witness of what the true order and universal fellowship of the world is; next, by using the society which embodies this fellowship as an instrument for cultivating the spirit of each nation, for awakening each to the perception of the object of its existence, for destroying in each the motives which lead to strife and division, (the worst and strongest of those motives being the trade temper;) finally, by putting into the hands of the national ruler a sword for the chastisement of those who love war rather than peace, a sword not to be sheathed or to grow rusty till all things be fulfilled.
II. It remains that I should say a few words respecting those objections of the Quaker, which refer to a national provision for Christian ministers. We shall derive great help in understanding this subject, from the remarks which have been already made in this section. We have found that there are two societies, both organic, both forming part of the same constitution; both related to man under different aspects of his life; both bearing witness for God, according to different aspects of his character: the one expressed in such institutions as Sacraments, which directly concern man as a spiritual being; the other in such institutions as Property, which directly concern him as a creature of this earth. We have seen that the first and higher of these societies has been, under our dispensation, that which has called the lower into life. Now nothing is more true than the assertion of the Quaker, That all the provisions made for ministers of the Gospel in the first ages, were made by the love of their flocks. He is most right in asserting that this was so, because the principle of the Gospel is a principle of love, because the power of the Gospel is one which acts immediately upon the spirit and the will of man. He is most right in asserting, that since we are under the same dispensation of love as the Apostles were, the principles which governed the Church then are to govern it now. But he has overlooked one point; he has forgotten that love is not a thing which looks at to-day or to-morrow, but which stretches its thoughts into the future, which brings all ages together in its scope. The love of the early Church was not shewn to St. Peter and St. Paul chiefly for their own sakes, but as stewards of the mysteries of God, as the representatives of a kingdom of which there was to be no end. Therefore it was inevitable that this charity should be exercised in providing for the wants of the time to come, for the service of God and for the benefit of men in generations unborn. I ask whether this far-looking spirit of charity be not more indicative of a divine dispensation, than that which can only see present objects, can only think of those to whom it is personally obliged? And yet it is this charity which is the foundation of all the complaints of Quakers against the principle of an ecclesiastical property. That property is expressly a fund of which particular men, in particular ages, are merely the stewards; which is a fund for all ages.
But I grant that whatever may have been the origin of such a fund, it is a most dangerous possession for anybody, providing the ends for which it exists are not very clearly defined. Now, the effect of the union of the Church with the nation is precisely to define these objects, to make the property which is bestowed upon the ecclesiastical society as such, available for certain clear, intelligible purposes. The Church establishes itself in a particular district, sets up its buildings, carries on its services by the processes which I have spoken of already; the people, among whom it comes, acquire a national consistency, begin to have more distinct notions about their relation to each other, and about this matter of property. What they do with reference to this ecclesiastical property, is to give it the security which belongs to individual property, and by different arrangements to make it available for the education of the nation from age to age. What further they do, is to exact from the owners of the soil a direct acknowledgment that their own property, though assured to them individually, is a trust from God, for the good of the nation, and must contribute a portion of its produce to the general fund. This is the simple history of Church property, and of its connexion with national property. It was increased afterward by voluntary gifts and bequests, the fruit in many cases of superstitious influences, but of influences acting upon the will, and therefore not destroying the character of the benefaction. On the other hand, the influence of the nation, as everybody knows, was exerted in the Middle Ages to prevent this accumulation of wealth, to make these gifts and bequests difficult or ineffectual. Nothing, therefore, can be a greater perversion of history than to speak of ecclesiastical revenues, as if they were the fruit of union with the State. The State has been a great instrument, in God’s hands, for preventing the mischiefs which might have accrued to the Church, and which did accrue to it at different times, from its influence over the minds of men. On the other hand, it has been a great instrument in pointing out to the Church the purposes for which its wealth has been given it, and may be most profitably exercised. And if we are asked to shew what tokens there are of its being the will of God, that a fund should exist for the teaching of the nation, which should be exempt from the assaults of individual avarice, and which should not be diverted to mere selfish uses, I will mention three.
First, the shameful inclination which the clergy have often shewn to turn this wealth to purposes of selfishness and luxury; the witness which it has borne against that sin, the strong feeling and conscience in men, that because the clergy were stewards of this property, selfishness was a greater sin in them than in others; the heavy judgments which have followed upon the exhibition of it. Secondly, the greedy disposition which the nobles and gentry have shewn to plunder this property; the proofs they have given that this disposition was part of the same which led them to be careless of their tenants and dependants, to live lives of self-indulgence, to say, ‘The soil is our own, who is Lord over us;’ the miserable habits which they have cultivated in themselves and transmitted to their descendants, whenever there has not been such a fixed and continual testimony as Church property furnishes against these wicked imaginations. Lastly, the utter incapacity of Quakers, with all their charitable tendencies, acts, and protests, to convince the world that they do not estimate wealth far above its value; that they do not look upon the acquisition of it as the main end of life. I do not say the impression is a true one; I do say that a society which exists to bear a testimony against that which is secular, has utterly failed in making mankind understand the testimony, and has failed precisely because it has treated property as a thing necessary and yet evil; to be toiled and watched for, and yet not to be redeemed from temporary and service uses for the continual service of God and man.