The Good News of God

by Charles Kingsley

‘Forbid him not,’ said Jesus himself. He that hath ears to hear his Saviour’s words, let him hear.

‘Therefore,’ St. Paul says, ‘let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory.’ It is a very sad thing to think that the human heart is so corrupt, that we should be tempted to do good, and to show our piety, through strife or vain-glory. But so it is. Party spirit, pride, the wish to show the world how pious we are, the wish to make ourselves out better and more reverent than our neighbours, too often creep into our prayers and our worship, and turn our feasts of charity into feasts of uncharitableness, vanity, ambition.

So it was in St. Paul’s time. Some, he says, preached Christ out of contention, hoping to add affliction to his bonds. Not that he hated them for it, or tried to stop them. Any way, he said, Christ was preached, whether out of party-spirit against him, or out of love to Christ; any way Christ was preached: and he would and did rejoice in that thought. Again I say, ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’

‘Esteem others better than ourselves?’ God forgive us! which of us does that? Is not one’s first feeling not ‘Others are better than me,’ but ‘I am as good as my neighbour, and perhaps better too?’ People say it, and act up to it also, every day. If we would but take St. Paul’s advice, and be humble; if we would take more for granted that our neighbours have common sense as well as we, experience as well as we, the wish to do right as well as we—and perhaps more than we have; and therefore listen humbly (that is St. Paul’s word, bitter though it may be to our carnal pride), listen humbly to every one who is in earnest, or speaks of what he knows and feels! People are better than we fancy, and have more in them than we fancy; and if they do not show that they have, it is three times out of four our own fault. Instead of esteeming them better than ourselves, and asking their advice, and calling out their experience, we are too in such a hurry to show them that we are better than they, and to thrust our advice upon them, that we give them no encouragement to speak, often no time to speak; and so they are silent and think the more, and remain shut up in themselves, and often pass for stupider people and worse people than they really are. Because we will not begin by doing justice to our neighbours, we prevent them doing justice to themselves.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Ah, my friends, if we could but do that heartily and always, what a different world it would be, and what different people we should be! If, instead of saying to ourselves, as one is so apt to do, ‘Will this suit my interest? will this help me?’ we would recollect to say too, ‘Will this suit my neighbours’ interest? Will this harm my neighbours, though it may help me? For if it hurts them, I will have nothing to do with it.’

If, again, instead of saying to ourselves, as we are too apt to do, ‘This is what I like, and done it shall be,’ we would generously and courteously think more of what other people like; what will please them, instruct them, comfort them, soften for them the cares of life, and lighten the burden of mortality—how much happier would not only they be, but we also!

For this, my friends, is the very likeness of Christ, who pleased not himself; the very likeness of Christ, who sacrificed himself.

And for this very reason St. Paul puts it the last of all his advices, because it is the greatest; the summing up of all; the fulfilment of the whole law, which says, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;’ and therefore after it he can give no more advice, for there is none better left to give: but he goes on at once to speak of Christ, who fulfilled that whole law of love, and more than fulfilled it; for instead of merely loving his neighbours as he loved himself (which is all God asks of us), Christ loved his enemies better than himself, and died for them.

So says St. Paul.—‘Look not every man on his own things, but on other people’s interest and comfort also. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ What mind? The mind which looks not merely on its own things, its own interest, its own reputation, its own opinions, likes, and dislikes, but on those of others, and has learnt to live and let live.

Yes, this, he says, is the mind of Christ. And this mind, and spirit, and temper, he showed before all heaven and earth, when, though he was in the form of God, and therefore, (as some interpret the text) would have done no robbery, no injustice, by remaining for ever equal with God (that is, in the co-equal and co-eternal glory which he had with the Father), yet made himself of no reputation, and took on him the form of a slave, and was obedient to death, even the death of the cross.