The passage: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
The people who heard the Sermon on the Mount were astonished, we are told, “for He taught them as One having authority, and not as the Scribes.” These were felt to be the words of a King, not of a Book. The Speaker was not spelling out God’s mind but announcing it; He had a right to be obeyed.
Something of this impression has carried through to later ages. Though the words have become letters, and the letters have been stereotyped, men in the far West have felt as if they stood on the brow of the old hill listening to Him. Those to whom Bible phrases have grown hard and traditional have approached this discourse with awe. Those who have thrown off faith in the specialities of Christianity have thought they found here something common and universal, worthy of their honor.
Such effects could hardly be produced if the discourse were not utterly simple and practical, free of artifice. Yet the most popular historian of our day—who ought to know rhetoric if anyone does—has called “highly rhetorical” the passages on forgiving injuries, and has declared, almost with Papal solemnity, that for sixteen centuries these passages were treated by everyone as figurative, until George Fox, founder of the Quakers, first imagined they had literal force. Such a claim, from one who represents so much of our age’s temper and knowledge of the past, may well stagger us. It must mean something important. How can it be reconciled with the judgment that not sixteen but eighteen centuries seem to have confirmed—the sense that these words are momentous and literal?
This subject touches us closely. It appeared plainly in the last session of Parliament that the legal and ecclesiastical conscience of this country were at odds over a question central to England’s domestic life.
Both sides agree domestic life is sacred. Those who proposed a new tribunal for marriage offences, and changes to divorce law, believed they were removing obstacles to morality and family peace. Those who opposed them feared dangerous confusion about the holiest obligations. So the ends agreed on both sides; but one side believed ordinary legislation and courts could handle the matter, the other that it is wholly subject to divine law, answerable only to specially framed courts. The Sermon on the Mount contains statements said to forbid the changes attempted. It is the very passage by which we measure the difference between the New Testament and the Old. Some ecclesiastical writers, of real weight, would strip it of this authority, supposing it tolerates an exception which a passage in Luke annuls. But this extreme view, like those it opposes, forces the whole question open: what kind of teaching is this, what does it address, to whom is it spoken, is it a code or something else, are its statements to be taken at full force or explained away as figurative and rhetorical?
Other, more recent and tremendous events press the same inquiry from a different angle. If the passages on forgiveness are read as George Fox and his followers read them, they must forbid punishing the Indian mutineers, forbid all effort to keep or recover our empire. But is that reading the only strict, literal one? If we abandon it, does the whole discourse lose its force as an utterance of the Divine Mind? Can we still call it the ethics of the Gospel, or must those ethics become something we bend and discard at will?
Tremendous issues are bound up in this inquiry from any angle we take it. Nothing less than the meaning of all morality, relative and absolute, is at stake. Is there any non-figurative moral foundation left to us, if Christ’s own words are figurative? I have no doubt that through sixteen, through eighteen centuries, there has been a disposition to treat these words as meaning very little, dispensable in Christian life. I am equally convinced there has been a feeling, all along, that they carry the most profound and awful meaning, that human life cannot be whole until it conforms to it. I do not think ecclesiastics, or Quakers, have been too strict in their interpretations—rather not strict enough, not careful enough to submit their own preconceptions to the mind of Christ, receiving Him simply as Lawgiver and Judge. The conflict between legal and ecclesiastical conscience, now and in past generations, would not have arisen if ecclesiastics had been less eager to establish their own theories and jurisdictions, and more resolute in acknowledging the full gravity of our Lord’s teaching on marriage and human relationships—more ready to connect the Sermon, as He connects it Himself, with the elder law He came to fulfil, not destroy. Then it would appear that the modern legislator has a function Christ’s teaching does not supersede but helps him perform, and that the Church has higher duties toward human relationships than obstructing that function. Likewise, so far as the Quaker has honestly sought to interpret the Sermon rigorously and apply it to his own life, he has benefited the world; and he has worked against the conscience of mankind, encouraging its self-indulgence and cowardice, exactly where he has shrunk from the full, severe meaning of its maxims and interpreted it by his own notions rather than in the light of Him who spoke it.
I will not take up either subject this afternoon; I reserve them for the next two Sundays. My text expresses the principle running through the whole discourse and governing all its particular topics. But it already brings us to the heart of the difficulties said to remove it from ordinary life. If we are anywhere in the region of rhetoric, surely it is here. The command to be “perfect”—who but some transcendent saint could be addressed? And “perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect”—must that not drive even the transcendent saint to despair?
I. I think, brethren, that the command to be “perfect” must indeed cause despair to a man who has been aspiring to be a transcendent saint, fancying himself unlike other men. What our Lord tells His disciples is that their righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees—men who had raised themselves above their fellows and looked down on the distant crowd with lofty pity, measuring their approach to perfection by their difference from others. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” was the axe laid to the root of this kind of perfection. Christ was not saying, “You are farther from the top of the ladder than you think,” or “you lack aids to ascend.” He was saying: “You are on the wrong road, pursuing a false end; every step in this direction takes you farther from perfection, not nearer.” And why must it? The Pharisee does his works to be seen by men—by the very men he scorns, to be admired by those he tramples on. This is the fate of such aspirants: they live for observation; the question becomes not what they are but how they appear. Alongside this motive to become actors, hypocrites in the strictest sense, ran another: God Himself was conceived as demanding an outward, apparent service. He had given common precepts—not to kill, not to commit adultery—which even the vulgar must be forced to keep by penalty. The exalted man practised a “meritorious” obedience, different in degree but the same in kind: not eating with unwashed hands, fasting at set times, keeping the hours of prayer—obligations appended to, not deduced from, the law, by which the select class might win God’s favor. Our Lord dwells on one commandment treated with particular contempt by these seekers of holiness: honoring father and mother was set aside when the money that might support them was dedicated instead to the Temple. Nothing shows more clearly the nature and results of Pharisaic religion: common, relative duties—especially family duties—were discarded, while holiness became entirely individual, aimed at procuring rewards for the individual, even though it was entirely social too, since so much of it depended on having spectators to notice and be affected by it.
Another feature belongs with those already named: the Pharisaic aspirant took evil as his starting point, as the very condition of the human race; every step that raised him above evil raised him above mankind. Godliness and humanity became direct opposites.
When our Lord said “Be perfect,” His whole discourse makes clear He meant, “Be men. You cannot be anything better than what you are created to be; you make yourselves worse by trying to be something else.” Those to whom the Kingdom belongs are those who do not lift themselves above their fellows—the meek, the merciful. Those to be comforted are those suffering as other men suffer, with them. The reward goes not to those who possess righteousness but to those hungering and thirsting after it. Not to those the world admires, but those only God can see—the pure in heart, who shall see Him as He sees them. Not to those men speak well of, but those they revile and cast out, who thereby join fellowship with the old prophets. All this perfection is social, not individual as the Pharisee’s was; yet it is hidden, not visible and admired as his was.
Notice too how this affects the relation between this Gospel of perfection and the old Law. The difference is in kind, not degree. It is not a new code appended to the old, nor a special code for a special class. The Gospel commandment belongs to the man himself; the legal precept belongs to his acts. That is why the Gospel completes and fulfils the Law without destroying a jot of it. Each stands distinct, each sustains the other; they do not clash, because they belong to different regions, yet they continually act on each other—the weakness of one is the weakness of the other, the strength of one the strength of the other, since both apply to the same human race. The Lawgiver, dealing with acts, says, “Thou shalt not kill”; the King, speaking to the mind, says, “Thou shalt not be angry with thy brother without cause.” The Lawgiver says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”; the King says, “Thou shalt not look on a woman to lust after her.” The Lawgiver says, “Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but perform thine oaths to the Lord,” warning that perjury will be avenged. The King over the spirit says, “Swear not at all,” guarding the constant, hourly reverence for God without which even the solemn oath loses its worth through the carelessness of everyday speech.
How forcefully this applies to the honoring of parents which the Pharisees set aside by their traditions, I will show under the next head. What I note now is that Jesus could raise the standard of human morality against the inhuman Pharisaic standard because He was Himself the Son of Man—because He came to declare and to embody the truth that God and man are eternally united, not divided; that man is made in God’s image, so that what is truly human answers to what is truly divine; that the fall of the first man was a fall from trust in God and from belief in the state meant for him; and that the fall of every man consists in choosing to be a separate, selfish being, standing in his Adam-nature, renouncing union with Christ and fellowship with others—the very thing that constitutes our perfection as members of the human race.
- But secondly, He says, “Be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” If the first clause did not already prescribe something impossible, what does this addition do? I say it removes any discouragement the rest might have left; it gives us a rule that, unlike other moral philosophies, is compassionate, practical, and hopeful—proof that Christ’s demand is higher than any other, and yet that “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”
1. A man might say: “I am convinced that social, human morality—being a good father, son, husband, citizen—is the highest morality, higher than any admired religious selfishness or its rewards. But the more I want this ordinary perfection, the farther away it seems. God may ask no more than that I do justice, love mercy, walk humbly—but how hard is doing justice! How the love of mercy vanishes when I want to avenge a personal injury! What pride enslaves me just when I think I have gained humility! The best rules cannot make me what St. Paul says I should be to my children, my servants. Even if I love those who love me and yield to natural affection, my conscience tells me I am partial, doing injury both to those I favor and those I neglect.”
Such thoughts arise in someone aspiring not to fantastic excellence but simply to do his duty where he stands. He does not scorn laws; he reveres the Ten Commandments as divine, but somehow they do not reach him—he needs help they cannot give. To fulfill any relation, he must not only avoid wrong but do right, and not only do right but be right. How can he be right? Our Lord tells him he is actually a child of a Father in Heaven, and that earthly relationships are grounded on and shaped after that heavenly one. The Eternal Father established each family because He established one Universal Family in His Son—this is what Christ revealed. The Pharisee would not honor father or mother, reserving all honor for God, and so could not honor God either, since he did not believe in God as Father. Jesus bids us not love father or mother more than Him, because in Him alone dwells the love we can truly show them; apart from Him it becomes a mere selfish affection, dependent on accident, sure to dry up unless constantly renewed from His love. The perfection He commands, true human perfection, becomes possible when we submit to the Will governing the universe and governing us, cease resisting it, and let the Spirit proceeding continually from Father and Son remove the conceit, vanity, and restlessness that make us miserable.
2. As this Name holds the power to make us all we could wish to be, it also holds infinite compassion and forgiveness for our failures—which we seek in vain from every teacher in the world, even the most tolerant, who bid us be content with states our own conscience refuses to accept. I have a right to be like my Father in Heaven; that is my true human condition. But I also have a right to go to Him and say, “Father, I have not cared to be like You, have not believed I could be, have not confessed myself Your child.” I may lay bare all my weakness before One who knows its full extent, who understands my failures and cares for me more than I can imagine. “Be perfect by this rule”—but may I confess to a rule? Will it understand my sorrow, or make me sorry? “Be perfect by the standard of this holy man”—but does he know what I strive against, comprehend my stupidity and selfishness? Can his life become mine? “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect”—this the man who has fallen most often, who knows best the enemy’s strength and his own weakness, who is sunk in deep mire, bound in fetters he longs to escape, hears as the assurance that he may yet rise and walk, that there is a home for him and One who will bring him there. Whatever anger or hatred grips him, however circumstances seem to justify it, however far it banishes God from him—He who is all Mercy, Forgiveness, Patience is not far off; He bids me be what He is, and can make me so. Who raised in a quiet, pious home can know what it costs a man bred among curses to obey “swear not at all”? What would become of him, if he could not throw himself on the pity and strength of the very Being whose name he is tempted to profane? And doing so, how much more he may come to know of that Being than those more fortunately raised!
3. This text cuts through the webs in which casuists entangle the conscience, ending the tricks the deceitful heart continually plays. Peter, still learning the rudiments of his faith, asks, “How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?”—an opening for a Confessor’s endless refinements of degree, occasion, and circumstance, for delicate distinctions and evasions that torment the doubter’s conscience while indulging his worst inclinations. Our Lord’s answer contains no such subtlety: a simple parable meaning that God forgives, and if you are unlike God in this you are miserable. There is no measure or limit set. God’s mind is the standard: would you have Him forgive less, or less from the heart? Then your own forgiveness may be so measured. Yet in the same parable God is shown punishing severely—so punishment is not incompatible with love and compassion, and may even be required by it. Be perfect, then, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.
I will say more on forgiveness later. I mention it now to illustrate that because Gospel morality allows no indulgences, because it sets only the highest standard, it actually lays a lighter burden than any other—it is from first to last a deliverance from burdens. We are oppressed by the sense of what we ought to be and cannot be. What do we gain by persuading our conscience that our obligations are less than we thought? Reduce them, and what remains will feel just as overwhelming; as our aims sink lower each day, the difficulty of reaching even them grows greater. Christ teaches that the burden lies not in the strictness of any law but in ourselves—that every law, human or divine, is weak through the flesh, and that so long as we are merely trying to obey a rule, even a moderate one, we will find it a burden. But when we claim our true standing as new men, created for good works, children of a Father in Heaven, we become united to the very source from which laws proceed: obedience becomes recognized as reasonable and natural to us, disobedience as the unnatural, miserable departure from a blessed order—and for such lapses there is confession, the gift of repentance, and a divine restoration that no human indulgence or tolerance can give.
Nor, since it is not casuistical, is this morality rhetorical. The rhetorician praises virtues as belonging to certain favored persons he is paid to admire, and denounces vices as though only certain people were capable of them. Our Lord speaks of the highest virtues as resemblances to the Father in Heaven, in whose image all men are made and in Christ redeemed to be renewed. He treats every vice the law condemns as one any man might fall into, lying close to every man, arising from inclinations no one is a stranger to. The rhetorician deals in grand generalities about magnanimous endurance; Christ speaks of the man struck on one cheek turning the other, the man compelled to go one mile going two—homely illustrations the rhetorician despises, and exactly what we need for the business of life.
I will not anticipate what I hope to say next Sunday about the conflict between legal and ecclesiastical morality. But I will say this: the more we clergy teach children and grown men the old Catechism’s doctrine that they are “members of Christ, and children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven,” the more faithfully we fulfil our task, and the more clearly we show that the nation needs help beyond what laws and penalties can give, both to preserve what is good and to reform what is evil. Above all, I trust you will come to see that in this teaching, borne out by the whole history of the Old and New Testaments, lies the protection of domestic society, of reverence for parents, of the marriage bond. What ecclesiastics have done for these things I must confess with much sorrow and shame. What the Gospel has done for them—what the Church of God, so far as it has witnessed to Christ’s redemption and our adoption as His Father’s children, has done for them—I can affirm with full confidence, appealing to the facts of history and the conscience of mankind. We do not owe, and shall not owe, the sacredness of our hearths and homes to legal enactments or to any court, whatever its name. We owe it to Him who said, “Be ye perfect, as my Father in Heaven is perfect,” who made Himself the Bridegroom and Husband of our race; and we shall owe its continuance and its elevation to the growing belief that all things in heaven and earth rest not on the shifting sand of legal or priestly invention, but in Him who was before all worlds and will remain when everything made merely by our hands has passed away.