June 28, 1857
“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”—1 Peter v. 5.
There is a general complaint in our day—in some quarters one hears it very loudly indeed—that reverence has become, or is rapidly becoming, extinct. The words of Isaiah, it is said, are fulfilling themselves: “The child behaves himself proudly against the ancient, the base against the honourable.” The sentiment of respect is gone; each one stands upon his own powers and his own right.
I suppose all of us, in a certain degree, recognize the truth of this charge against our own time. I suppose most have occasionally seen hopeful symptoms which have encouraged them to think that our condition may not be so bad as it is represented, or that there is a good counteracting the evil. I suppose that we have sometimes asked ourselves whether the feeling of personal independence is not in itself a good which may make amends for many losses that accompany the acquisition of it.
But any consolation which we might derive from this last reflection, is checked by another. Can we claim this sentiment of personal independence as at all characteristic of ourselves? Is it not fading along with the one which appears to contend with it? Is there not less of self-reliance than there was? Are not men in all classes more lazily casting themselves upon some hope of relief to come from some accident or foreign help; striving less earnestly, less hopefully, to earn their bread by the sweat of their own brows? The sturdiness and manliness of the English peasant—so we are often told—are disappearing, just as evidently as his feeling of deference for those who are above him.
I do not think that much good ever comes from balancing the arguments which show that the former days are better than ours against those which show that we are far greater, happier, more glorious than our forefathers. Every man of ordinary resources can call into the field an array on either side which for the moment will look overwhelming; a practised rhetorician will be able so to group facts and manage authorities, that no doubt of his conclusion will rest upon the mind of any one who wishes to adopt it.
I. But a sentence like this, if we felt it to be indeed a command, “All of you be subject one to another,”—would not that be something more than these speculations about the decline of reverence in an age or a country? That speaks to me. It tells me of a temper which ought to exist in society, which would preserve it; but of a temper which is first of all to be cultivated in myself—which cannot by possibility be diffused through a mass, except as it is formed in the heart of a man. What is the use of talking about the increase or diminution of the signs of respect in one class towards another? what is the use of arguing how far these signs actually mean as much as they seem to mean, or mean nothing? We may go at once to the thing signified: we may ascertain what we intend by our outward acts and tokens of respect; what they answer to in ourselves; what they do not answer to. We may look at once to the root of the matter, and see whether our respect is merely the effect of the circumstances and accidents in which we live; whether it depends on some external conventional witness of propriety and decorum; whether it has been merely taught us by the precept of men; or whether it proceeds from an under source, and is kept alive by springs within, which the Spirit of God Himself is renewing continually.
These are the really important inquiries; upon them all others depend. If we suppose that a reverence grounded on mere social arrangements, upon that which has been settled and decreed and has become a part of the traditions and customs of an age or a country will stand any shocks, we shall certainly be deceived. These social arrangements, these customs and traditions, are not ancient enough for a feeling so deep and venerable as this to sustain itself upon; they hang upon it far more than it hangs upon them; they speak to it and call it forth only because they bear witness of something deeper beneath, from which if they are separated, all their charm vanishes. And let us not suppose that when these props fail, the Bible or Christianity can be called in to aid their weakness, The Bible and Christianity are continually forcing this thought upon us, that nothing can stand which has not a foundation; that if we wish any social edifice to bear the winds and rain, we must dig deep and build it upon a rock; that the passion of the heart for external things and forms, though it looks strong, is not a safe one—not one upon which we can depend. For the idol of yesterday may not be the idol of to-day; if then the thing or the form derives its substance from the mind of the worshipper, it must be subject to all the vicissitudes and fluctuations of that mind, which always claims a right to depose that which it has established. To this point then the Apostle brings us. He recognises the relation of younger to elder as a very deep relation, involving duties, calling for subjection. With this natural relation he connects others equally real, though not equally acknowledged. But he has no hope that his admonitions will be heeded, that they will be more than any other maxims of behaviour, which are listened to, and approved, and disobeyed, unless the principle which lies beneath them is apprehended. “All of you be subject one to another.” This reverence is not one grounded ultimately upon differences of position or differences of age. Unless each man cherishes it toward every other man; unless he feels that there is a grandeur and awfulness in the fellow-creature who is not distinguished from him by any external signs of superiority at all, who has all the external signs of inferiority, unless he feels that there is (the word is a strong one, but it is St. Peter’s, and we cannot change it) a subjection due to every such man, that a positive deference is to be paid him,—he will not keep alive the other kind of respect, it will assuredly perish.
The old oriental notion that royalty is mysterious, and that when it casts away mystery it ceases to obtain respect, is unquestionably grounded on a great truth. It becomes converted into a great falsehood when the mystery is degraded into a trade mystery; when vulgar arts are used to keep up the impression of something sacred and divine,—those who practise them all the while not believing that there is anything behind the mask which they have themselves shaped out and painted. St. Peter does not deny the mystery which these traders counterfeit, but leads us to another which is yet more profound and awful, and before which we should learn to tremble. He finds this mystery in the being of man himself; every one he meets is the shrine of it; every beggar carries in him that which an archangel cannot look into, which can be described in no words, measured by no human standards. Try to think of him in that character; try to believe that he is not one with the rags that cover him, but is one of that race for which the Son of God died; that he bears the nature which He took in the virgin’s womb, which He offered up on the Cross, in which He dwells on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Try to think of that man as having a whole world within him, unknown to you, unknown to him, which is yet a more wonderful world than this which his eyes and yours look upon; nearer to the centre from which this external one receives its light and heat.
Try to think so! But will the trial succeed? Is there any chance of forcing ourselves into so strange a state of feeling? Is not this sympathy with people utterly different from ourselves a special gift to a few individuals, commonly women rather than men? And is it not more properly called pity than reverence?
II. St. Peter meets these questions in the second part of the text: “Be clothed with humility.” St. Peter knew—no one better—that it is not in station nor in mere example to make a man humble. He was a fisherman, yet he was proud. He conversed with our Lord for three years; still he was proud. He was low, but he aspired to be high. He might be spurned by the people of Judæa as a Galilean, or by the Romans as a Jew; but perhaps he should set his foot upon the necks of both; he should have some goodly place in his Master’s kingdom, if not the highest place of all. An ambition which seemed very lofty, and yet which was, in truth, not lofty enough. He was to attain more than he dreamed of; he was to have a greater apprehension of the glory which belonged to him even than he had yet realised. And that he might attain this, he was first of all to know what he was in himself. The self-confidence was brought to the test and fell; he would go to prison and death, but he had not courage to speak the truth before a servant. What darkness closed in upon him then and shut out all the past and the future! What light was really coming to him through that darkness,—a light that illuminated past, present, and future! In himself he was the weakest of all creatures: he could not impute any weakness, any heartlessness to another, which he had not been made conscious of in himself. But had he no strength? was it altogether a dream that he could go to prison and death? There was One in that house standing before Caiaphas, shortly to be brought to the Roman Governor, thence to be taken to Calvary. Why was it that he had felt that strength in his person which had now deserted him? A question full of doubt, full of wonder, not to be solved then, though Christ Himself had said within a few hours, “I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide in me, and my word shall abide in you.” A question which the Resurrection itself and all the words that were spoken after it, and the Ascension, only begin to clear up. A question which that Comforter Who was to be sent from the Father, and to testify of Christ, alone could clearly unfold. Under his teaching the Apostle learnt that to set up himself must be his folly, his misery, his degradation; that to trust in Christ was to abide in his true state; to claim fellowship with the real Lord of his life, the source of all his powers, energies, hopes, to become the sharer of a mysterious kingdom, to become the trustee of mighty powers, to enter into the reality of his dreams, to leave all and yet to possess all things. But to trust in Christ was to trust in Him Who had said, “Come unto me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” To trust in Him was to be clothed with humility. Peter had none of it himself; if he fancied it, he became proud again—more proud than ever. But he knew that pride was always near him, that it was his besetting sin; that he could only be freed from it by turning to Him who was as much the friend and lifegiver to the most insignificant lamb of the flock as to him, one of the chief shepherds of it.
Such phrases as these then, which occur so often in the New Testament, “Put on Christ,” “Having the mind of Christ,” “Be clothed with humility,” which are often cast aside as mere figures of speech, oriental modes of thought, were the most accurate, the most exactly corresponding to his inward experience, which the Apostle could use. I believe they are the most accurate we can use, and that the more we know of ourselves, the more we shall find in them the profoundest reality, that which meets our necessities as none other can.
III. It introduces and explains the third clause of the text, “For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” “How shall I be rid of this pride, it is so natural, so ingrained?” This must have been St. Peter’s question very often; it must be ours. At last he found the answer. It was a terrible one. It was an everlasting one. When he was proud he was not sinning against a rule, a precept; he was resisting God,—that God Who had been pleased to make man His habitation and temple, to dwell in the midst of His creatures, to enclose them with His own power, to guide and actuate them by His own inspiration. Every act of pride was nothing more than doing battle against Him; refusing to be ruled and moved by Him. And all humility meant nothing else but yielding to His government,—but permitting the Spirit of Christ to hold that spirit which He had redeemed, and claimed for His own. It was a bold thing to talk of clothing himself with the Righteousness of Christ, of putting on His qualities. Very bold; but if this is our proper humanity,—if no other is intended for us,—if all that we have substituted for it has been assumed in spite of God’s Will—He Himself will clothe us with our right mind, He Himself is clothing us day by day. For what is all the discipline of life but this? What is it, but urging us not to set ourselves above the Son of God, to be content to stoop as the Lord of Earth and Heaven stooped? And when a man is once bowed to the conviction that he is not meant to be what his Master and King refused to be, that it is not condescension in him to be on a level with those to whom the Prince of the kings of the earth levelled Himself, “God giveth grace.” All the powers of the universe are then conspiring with him, not pledged to crush his wild Titanic ambition. The loving might of the Creator is not any longer a weight upon the poor atom that is sustained and kept in existence by it; that poor atom may be sure that this might, this love, will be with him in the height and in the depth, in life and death; will quicken it with immortal energies, will make it serve His gracious purposes more and more through the ages to come.
IV. St. Peter then could transfer his own hardly-won experience to the Church, and could say in his Catholic Epistle to the dispersed of that time, to the dispersed through all time, “All of you be subject one to another.” So he asserted the true condition of a society while he took down the conceit of its separate members; so he exalted each of these members in the very act of depressing him. One dwells among you Whom Principalities and Powers confess to be the Lord. God wills that you should be all like Him; that you should all share His glory. And this was His glory,—to be the servant of all, to bear the sins of all, to die the death of all. Be sure that in every one of these miserable creatures of flesh and blood He is dwelling; that they will be manifested hereafter as His brethren. Be subject to Him then in them. In every one there is something sacred, something from which thou hast to learn, something which thou hast to obey. Take an extreme case, for laws like these admit of no exceptions. A fool or a reprobate, a man whom it is a duty to restrain and to punish, may speak words which will touch thee to the quick. The lips may be polluted, but the underground from which they issue is divine, oracular. Fear to reject the sentence, lest thou shouldst be rejecting one that comes out of the mouth of God. And reverence the shrine too. The man may be regarding himself as a beast, may be making himself one. But do not thou indorse his blasphemy. Reverence him, that he may learn to reverence himself. Reverence him too much to indulge any of his follies or his sins. Deal with them severely; use the sharpest discipline which the case calls for. But remember that these are his enemies, his destroyers, not himself.
V. Generally this rule of being subject one to another, when applied to a society, implies that we should respect the opinions, habits, individual peculiarities, hereditary prepossessions of every man with whom we have to do; that we should take it for granted he has something which we need; that we should fear to rob him of anything which God has given him. This respect for him does not come from our caring more for him than for Truth. It is part of our homage to Truth. There is a danger of making him less true, of alienating him from Truth, through our desire to attach him to ourselves. And therefore that same subjection one to another must make us resolute to maintain all truth so far as we have grasped it; courageous to assert it; vehement in denouncing all the habits of mind which, we know from ourselves, are unfavourable to the pursuit of truth, and undermine the love of it.
And so this submission to man, which is in very deed submission to God, will preserve us from all servility; from that kind of deference to the judgment of individuals or of multitudes which is incompatible with genuine manliness, because it is incompatible with genuine reverence.
I believe, brethren, nothing is so fatal to the respect of the younger for the elder, to the respect for what is beautiful and gracious, to all noble and chivalric duty and obedience, as that bastard homage for what is not venerable but very vulgar and contemptible, which creeps so readily over us, and which has been an especial disgrace and curse of our day. The worship of those who by fair means or foul have scraped a certain quantity of money together—the worship of the thing called public opinion,—is possible only because the reverence for man as man is so weak and low amongst us. When we really cultivate that, all other kinds of deference to age, to rank, to office, will be possible and will be honourable. Without it they become degrading affectations; they take their colour from the baseness of our ordinary habits.
How ignominious is it then in Churchmen to be crying out that they and their offices do not meet with the respect which was paid them in the old time; that the rich scorn us privately; the poor openly; that religion is despised in the persons of its representatives! How dare we make such complaints ourselves, or suffer others to make them for us? What is it but saying that the Church is not constituted upon the principle on which our Lord declared that it is constituted upon which He proved that it is constituted—that the chief of all is the servant of all. For if that be the law of its existence, we must be much more to blame for any want of reverence that exists around us than any other men can be. We must have failed in that reverence for all men, that subjection to all men, which it is our calling to exhibit. We must have failed to show the rich how beggarly that is which distinguishes them from the poor, how glorious that is which they share together. We must have fallen ourselves into that subjection which is not human, but slavish; not humble, but self-seeking; not of Christ, but of Antichrist. Before we say a word against our English people for despising us, let us see to it that we have not earned their contempt by qualities which are offensive to all true English freedom and manliness; before we say that they have lost their Christianity, let us earnestly consider whether we have not parted with ours.
We boast that our Church does not stand upon a human foundation; that we do not make that Apostle whose words we have been considering this afternoon, whose festival we shall be keeping to-morrow, into the Rock of our trust. It is a worthy cause of congratulation, if we are holding the less on Him whom St. Peter confessed to be the Son of the living God, if the Stone elect and precious of which he wrote, of which he lived to testify, is the one which is binding us as a holy Temple together. But we are not confessing Jesus to be the Son of God, we are not regarding Him as the corner-stone of our building, if we are not learning the lesson which St. Peter has been teaching us to-day; if we seek to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi, if we do not seek to show who is our Master by being subject one to another as He was. For by subjection He proved Himself on earth to be the Son Who dwelt with the Father before all worlds; His subjection to the Cross was His exaltation above every name that is named. Filial subjection He showed to be essential to that perfect union of substance and of will which He has with the Father in the Blessed Spirit; and we are told that as it was in the beginning so it shall be in the end. For it is written that when all things are put at the feet of the Son, the Son Himself shall be subject to Him Who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.