Men in the Making

by Ambrose Shepherd

Put it in this way: granted we loved others as we love ourselves—this should be good and pleasant for those who possessed our love, if it had genuine strength in it. Granted, again, we had the fulness of the strong love of others, that should be helpful to us. If we may condition the Royal Law in some such manner as this, "Love them who love us;" or, "love them who are worthy of our love," the difficulty is obviously lessened, if not in fact removed. But such a limit, while it might amount to prudence, would not reach up to beatitude. "If ye love them who love you, what do ye more than others?" "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." But who is thy neighbour? And Jesus answers, "thy neighbour is he who bears thy nature." This is iteration, but I venture it because I want us to confront the real insistence of this text. They who share our nature may be, and often are, those who hate us with or without a cause. There are people who perpetuate an existence on others which is little better than a moral and physical calamity. To tell us to tolerate them, not to speak about loving them, is like telling us to attempt the impossible. And yet Jesus did not forget these people when He said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you."

We, then, who say we accept Christ's teaching must accept it. This is one of the places where we cannot escape behind some ingenuity of exegesis or manipulation of text. The command is plain. We can take it or leave it. One thing we cannot do, we cannot re-write it. "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." As thyself. If this but fixes a hard standard; or simply indicates the measurement of neighbourly love, then we may almost as well close the discussion—its practical attainment is out of our reach.

But, as some one has very wisely said: "Love of self must become a medium before it becomes a measure." [1] In other words, we cannot love our neighbour as we ought until we love ourselves as we should. Out of love of self "flow the ingredients which must enter into neighbour love."

The text, then, lays down a twofold obligation: to cultivate a right love of self, and to translate this love of self into love for others.

As touching the first part of this obligation, it is useless to ask what it is in our neighbour we are to love as ourselves, until we know what it is in ourselves we are to love. In what sense is a man to love himself? Because there is a radical difference between self-love as taught and practised in the world, and the love of self sanctioned and regulated by the Royal Law. Love of self is a right anxiety to secure the things we need in this world. It is based upon the principle that life is not to be unclothed but clothed upon. The fact that we are in the world and have to fulfil its desired ends should carry with it reverence for our manhood, and the demand for space to work out its full equation. While the Apostle Paul was always ready to subject his rights to the law of love, he was equally careful to assert that they were his rights before he yielded them. In his care for the weak brethren, he did not become a weak brother. One of the first things we have to learn, is how to take wise care of ourselves; and then, step by step, a true life is a growth in the knowledge of how so to take care of ourselves as to promote the best interests of others. In this matter of a right love of self, the point of transition at which it passes into beneficence is the victory over a self-love which is selfishness. It is really the basal principle of moral government in the world.

But when this is said, the surest and simplest answer to the question, What is it in ourselves we are to love? is to say—We are to love that which God loves in us. And what does God love in us? From all we know of the divine nature as revealed in Jesus Christ, we are surely right in thinking that God loves in us what is most like Himself. No man can stand at Calvary reverently and thoughtfully for five minutes without being impressed with the truth of a wondrous self-sacrifice. I met with a remark lately in a story I was reading which fastened itself on my mind. It was made by a poor, toiling woman who had scarcely sufficient means to keep body and soul together: "I never, somehow," she said, "seem to think a thing is mine until I have given it away."

This is the spirit that God loves, a spirit ever getting further away from "miserable aims that end with self." God loves in us the self-mastery that scorns to compromise with self-indulgence. God loves in us that which cannot find its true home in the things seen and temporal, but must ever soar out to the things unseen and eternal; the things that live in and wait upon the earnest man and after which he must ceaselessly aspire. God loves in us the strenuous effort which proceeds from the conviction that there is sacred power in every life which must not be wasted in "egotistical pride, or in a narrowing self-love." From instinct, from the moral consciousness, from the Scriptures—these we know to be representative of the things that God loves. And we know we are right in loving in ourselves what God loves in us. We also know that no man can wisely love himself until he knows the purifying power of a love that is divine.

If now I may assume that this exposition of the text shows the ground, and defines the sphere of a right love of self, I may further say that the Royal Law does not require us to love in others what it does not permit us to love in ourselves. And we do well to be clear about this. Many of us stumble over this text because, not getting at its true inwardness, we have an uneasy feeling that it carries us too far. Others try to work up an artificial sentiment, and profess to exercise a charity which is not theirs to extend.

Here is a man, let us say, who calls himself a religious man, who yet notoriously is a mean and shabby creature. I once heard this man, well placed and prosperous, boast of having that day become richer by some twelve hundred pounds through an oversight of a solicitor in winding up the affairs of a late client. I afterwards learned that the mistake was at the expense of a widow and her young children, who, because of it, were brought within very measurable distance of want. Must my love for my neighbour include one callous enough, not only to do a thing like that, but to boast about it? Must it annex the whole low plane of such a squalid disposition? God forbid. What I hope I should hate in myself I am not asked to love in another. If a man is base and unworthy we are to recognize the fact, however ugly; we are to look the devil in him in the face, and say it is the devil.

But, on the other side, Christianity admonishes us that our judgments of our neighbours are neither infallible nor final. It has been well pointed out, that if we "have found any part of the secret of God's mercy shown to us, we shall not find it hard to believe in God's mercy for our neighbours." To realize that the essential thing the Redeemer saw in us and deemed it worth dying for, He sees in them, will help us, however weary at times in their service, not to weary of it.