RESERVE IN COMMUNICATING RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES
The next characteristic of the temperof the Christian follows by way of contrast on what has gone before. It is reserve in communicating religious privileges.
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you.”
There are high privileges which many men cannot appreciate; and if you press these upon them, you must not be surprised if, indignant with you for having given them something which seems so worthless, they take violent reprisals upon you.
We ask the question, Has our Lord, in inculcating the uncritical temper, inculcated the undiscriminating temper also? Certainly not. That which the Christian has received is of inestimable worth. The kingdom of God, as our Lord told us, is like a pearl of great price, which when a man hath found, for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that pearl. The Christian knows what it is to be a Christian, admitted into the fellowship of God, illuminated by His truth, empowered by His Spirit. In the light of God in which he lives he cannot butgaze out into the world with a discrimination like his Lord’s.
Our Lord, we notice, gave men the best they were capable of receiving. To all the world, if they had but the faith to trust His power, He gave the outpouring of that power in works of healing. He had compassion on them; He gave them what alone they were capable of appreciating—kindness, goodness. But did He teach all men the highest truth? No. He sifted, He discriminated them, till He had got those to deal with who really had ears to hear the highest truth, and then He told it them. Our Lord did not cast His pearls before swine, lest they should turn again and rend Him.
Thus we are to put before men what they are capable of appreciating. Not by any merits of ours, God has given us admission to His fellowship; He has given us great things and small things. We are not to be selfish misers, we are to be anxious to communicate all; but we are to be discriminating. Kindness, self-sacrifice, care for their interests, and their whole life—that all men can appreciate, and we are to give it to all. But we are not to shriek the highesttruths of religion at the street corner. We are to wait till people show a desire for the deepest things before we offer them religion. There is to be reserve in communicating religious privileges and religious truths.
Such was the method of the early Church. It went out into the world. It let all the world see the beauty of its life, the glory of its brotherhood, the splendour of its liberality. It made men feel that Christians were the friends of God. But it did not teach them the secrets of its life—its Creed, its Eucharist, its Prayer—till they were ready for them, and showed their readiness at least by inquiry. The Church would explain herself in apologies and dissipate misconceptions, but it was not her way to press her innermost truths upon the indifferent.
At the same time the Church has not an esoteric system, like the Pagan mysteries, or the schools of Gnosticism. These Gnostics would have only the intellectual admitted to the mysteries of God. That was not the Church’s way; her way was to teach every man (who would come with faith), that she might present everyman perfectly initiated in Jesus Christ.[83] The Church believed that nothing was necessary for the highest union with God but a simple sense of sin and faith in God, in His Son, in His Spirit. Nothing was necessary but these qualities of wanting and trusting, which are possible to all men. Her cry was—“Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” Only, let them come thirsty!
And surely that method which belonged to the early Church—although no doubt it was capable of being abused—is yet the true and best method. Let the Church show her compassion and goodness and geniality to all men, but not press upon them the mysteries of God until, under her discipline and teaching, they begin to show some disposition to receive them. This is a principle which admits of very different applications in a heathen country, in preaching religion among nominal Christians, and in the social intercourse of individuals; but it admits of some application everywhere. And above all let us take care that the Church appears before men’s eyes as offering provision of spiritual privileges not forthose who can pay for them, but for those who have some measure of spiritual appetite.