THE PLACE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER IN THE WORLD.
As soon as ever a man sets himself seriously to aim at this Christian character, the devil at once puts this thought into his mind—Am I not aiming at what is too high to be practicable? am I not aiming too high to do any good? If I am to help men, surely I must be like them? I must not be so unworldly, if I am to help men in this sort of world. Now our Lord at once anticipates this kind of argument. He says at once, as it were, No, you are to help men by being unlike them. You are to help men, not by offering them a character which they shall feel to be a little more respectable than their own, but by offering them a character filled with the love of God. They may mockit for a while; but in the “day of visitation,” in the day when trouble comes, in the day when they are thrown back on what lies behind respectability, in the day when first principles emerge, they will glorify God for the example you have given them. They will turn to you then, because they will feel that you have something to show them that will really hold water, something that is really and eternally worth having.
Thus our Lord at once proceeds to answer the question, How is a character such as the beatitudes describe, planted in a world such as this is, to effect good? It is to purify by its own distinctive savour, it is to be conspicuous by its own splendid truth to its ideal, it is to arrest attention by its powerful contrast to the world about it. This is the meaning of the metaphors which follow the beatitudes:
“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.”
“Ye are the salt of the earth.” Salt is that which keeps things pure by itsemphatic antagonistic savour. “Ye are the light of the world.” Light is that which burns distinctively in the darkness. “A city that is set on a hill” is a marked object, arresting attention over a whole country side.
“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” The savour of a Christianity which does not mean what it says, wherewith can it be salted? How can it recover its position and influence? Would it not be better never to have been Christians at all than to be Christians who do not mean what they say? What is so useless as a hollow profession of religion? “It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.”“I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”[34] Christians exist in order to make the contrast of their own lives apparent to the world.
“Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
We may point the significance of this teaching of our Lord by contrasting it with that of another great religious teacher. We have often heard it said that more people are good Mohammedans in Mohammedan countries than good Christians in Christian countries. That may be true, and for this reason: Mohammed set before his disciples an ideal of conduct calculated to commend itself naturally to the people he had to do with. Supposing no fundamental change of character, no real transformation, was required of them, he saw that they would be ready enough to observe religious ceremonies, and to fight, and to abstain from drink. He fastened on these things. These, he said, are what God requires of you. And he has won a high measure of success on the average. Mohammedans have been conspicuous for courage and temperance and regularity in the transaction of religious forms. But just because Mohammed was so easily satisfied,his religion has been a religion of stagnation. He neither aimed at nor effected any regeneration of man.
But our Lord said “Except a man be born again,”—i.e. unless so fundamental a change take place in him, that it can only be compared to a fresh birth—“he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And He made it plain that the working out of this new birth would not be possible without the sternest self-denial. For this very reason our Lord’s religion has found fewer genuine adherents than Mohammedanism, but by means of those who have been genuine adherents it has effected a profound spiritual renewal even in society as a whole.
No doubt the Church has often seemed to forget her Lord’s method. There have been times—as at the baptism of the Franks—when the Church incorporated men in masses, allowing the Christian standard to be lowered almost indefinitely, in order that a whole race might be called Christian. So, again, there was a time when Jesuit casuists said (in effect), if only we can keep people Catholic, making their confessions and receiving absolution, it shall be done at any costof accommodation to existing morals. Once more, the Church of England, in order to maintain the ideal of “a national Church,” has in result allowed almost all the power of spiritual discipline, which she should have kept in her own hand, to be surrendered to a Parliament which is in the loosest possible relation to Christianity of any kind.
In each of these cases the Church abandoned the method of Christ: she sacrificed reality to numbers, or genuine discipleship to supposed political influence, and as a result in each case the salt lost its savour.
The question remains for us “Wherewith can it be salted?” Is the savour of true Christianity among us so far gone as to be irrecoverable? We thankfully answer No. But if we are to make good our denial, we must set to work to let men understand that, as the Church has a creed which she cannot let go, and a ministry and sacraments which are committed to her to exercise and to dispense, so she has a moral standard, which, if she is not to fall under the curse of barrenness, she must re-erect and be true to. Only when men havecome to understand what the Christian moral standard is—in marriage and in the home, in commerce and in politics—and to understand that it can no more be dispensed with than the creed or the sacraments, is there any prospect of a healthy revival of church life.
CHAPTER IV
THE REVISION OF THE OLD LAW
THE character of the citizens of the new kingdom as described by our Lord was so surprising, so paradoxical, that it was inevitable the question should arise, Was He a revolutionary who had come to upset and destroy all the old law—was this a revolutionary movement in the moral and religious world? To this question, then, our Lord directly addressed Himself. The rest of the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount—St. Matthew v. 17 to the end—is simply a statement of the relation in which this new righteousness, this righteousness of the new kingdom, stands to the old righteousness of the Mosaic Law.
Our Lord explains that the new law stands in a double relation to the old. First, it is in direct continuity with what had gone before (vv. 17–19); and,secondly (vv. 20–48), it supersedes it, as the complete supersedes the incomplete.
(1) The continuity is thus stated:
“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Here we get the divine principle of action. God does not despair of what is imperfect because it is imperfect. He views every institution (or person) not as it is, but as it is becoming; not by the level of its present attainment, but by the character and direction of its movement. Everything that is moving in the right direction is destined in the divine providence to reach its fulfilment. This was the case pre-eminently with the Old Testament. It was imperfect, but its tendency was directed aright. As St. Irenæus says“The commandments are common to the Jews and us: with them they had their beginning and origin, with us their development and completion.”[35] And St. Augustine: “The New Testament is latent in the Old, and the Old Testament is patent in the New.”[36] Here then we have our chief object-lesson in the method of divine education. If we examine the matter in detail, we shall see that in the New Testament every element in the Old Testament finds itself fulfilled.
Is it prophecy, in the sense of prediction? In the Old Testament an ideal is projected into the future by inspired men, and in Christ and His kingdom it is realized. Moreover, if you look to the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles or to St. Matthew’s Gospel, you will see how full the early Christians were of the sense of this realization, of the sense that in the Old Testament is a forecast and in the New a fulfilment. Or is it the ritual law? You study its enactments in Leviticus; and then you read the Epistle to the Hebrews. You see how, to the mind of the spiritual Jewish-Christian writer, in the old law is external symbol and in Christ spiritual realization. Or is it the moral law? You compare the Ten Commandments in the Old Testamentwith our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount or St. James’ Epistle. They stand to one another as preliminary education to final enlightenment. And in another sense law altogether is represented by St. Paul as only the training of slaves or children in preparation for the sonship or manhood which is reached when the Spirit is given.
Or, once more, is it types of character that are in question? You know the old difficulty about Jacob and Esau. How can we approve of Jacob who was so deceitful? How can we disapprove of Esau who was so generous and impulsive? The answer is a deep and true one.It is that Esau’s impulsive nature led to nothing; he was “profane”;[37] in fact, Edom—the race of which Esau is the parent and type—produced nothing, changed nothing, brought nothing to perfection. Jacob, for all his mendacity, knew what it was to be in covenant with God, and his race grew into the likeness of God. Israel led to something.
All the imperfect elements in the Old Testament—and, of course, they are imperfect—reach fulfilment in the New.They enshrine the will of God at a certain stage. Therefore they are worthy of respect. They are to be realized, not violated. And so our Lord goes on to warn His disciples lest, in the enthusiasm of the new teaching, they should think that they could best show their zeal by disparaging elements in the old law under which they had been brought up. For it is always the case that when people have learned something new, their first impulse is to show what they have learned by disparaging what they knew before. Thus our Lord warns them of the low place in His kingdom which they will hold who exhibit towards even the details of the older teaching a spirit of destructiveness, and of the high esteem which will be accorded to the reverent handling of it.
(2) Then our Lord passes to the other side of the question. The old law was imperfect; the new law is to supersede it. The new law is to supersede it both as it is represented in the actual standard of its professors, the scribes and Pharisees (v. 20), and then, more than that, it is to supersede it even in its actual principles (vv. 21–48).
First, as regards its professors:
“For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
It is well known what the scribes and Pharisees represented. They had left out of consideration the prophetic teaching in the Old Testament and the prophetic element in the books of Moses—all that made light of outward observances by contrast with moral holiness or, still more, as divorced from it. They had made the observance of the ceremonies “the be-all and the end-all” of religion. Thus their religion was pre-eminently external and, as such, unprogressive. It was a religion, again, which with the help of dispensations and evasions could be practised without much spiritual or moral effort. Hence it ministered to self-satisfaction and hypocrisy. Thus our Lord continually judges it, and here He warns His disciples not to suppose that His revision of the old law is to result in the establishment of an easier religion than that of scribes and Pharisees. The requirement of obedience will be deeper and more searching.
But our Lord goes back behind theprofessors upon the law itself; and He proceeds in detail to deal with the old moral law, in order to deepen it into the law of His new kingdom.
There are two points to which I would call attention, which apply to all these modifications or deepenings of the old law.
First, notice the authority of the teacher. “It was said to them of old time”—that is by God Himself in the Mosaic Law—Thou shalt not do this or that; “but I say unto you.” Now this is a new tone, and it has only one legitimate explanation. All the prophets had said “Thus saith the Lord”: they had spoken the word of another. Jesus says “I say unto you,” thus giving one of many indications that He who spoke was different in kind from all other speakers upon earth; that He was the fount of the moral law, and could speak as the one supreme legislator with the voice, with the authority, of God Himself.
Secondly, notice that when our Lord deals with the different commandments, He deals with them on principles which in each case would apply to all the others. You could take the distinctiveprinciple which emerges in His dealing with the law of murder or of adultery, and apply it to the case of all the other commandments.[38] This is only one instance which goes to prove that our Lord does not mean to save us trouble. He teaches in a way which leaves us a great deal to do for ourselves, and requires of us a great deal of moral thoughtfulness.