Every well-told parable or fable, every artistically constructed novel or play, makes us take sides with the large-hearted hero against the mean, selfish villain.
In the same way Love's formulated laws, showing on what conditions it depends and to what results it leads, convince every one who has the experience by which to interpret them (and only to him who hath experience is interpretation given) that Love is the supreme law of life, and its requirements the right and reasonable conditions of individual and social well-being.
II
THE FULFILMENT OF LAW THROUGH LOVE
Jesus was born in a nation which had developed law to the utmost nicety of detail, and recognised all laws as expressions of the good will of God seeking the welfare of men. Prolonged experiments in living had proved certain kinds of conduct disastrous, and the states of mind corresponding to them, despicable. Law had prohibited this disastrous conduct, and the prophets had denounced these despicable traits.
Of course latent in the prohibitions of law was the constitution of the blessed Kingdom that would result if the law were observed; and dimly foreshadowed in the figurative expressions of the prophets was the vision of the glorified human society that would emerge when the despicable traits should be extirpated and the better order introduced. This negative and latent implication of law Jesus developed into Love as the positive and explicit principle of life; and this figuratively foreshadowed prophet's vision He translated into the actual fact of a community united in Love. He fulfilled the law by putting Love in the heart, and fulfilled the prophets by establishing a community based on Love. Jesus taught us to make every human interest we touch as precious as our own, and to treat all persons with whom we deal as members of that beneficent system of mutual good-will which is the Kingdom of Heaven. But the moment we begin to do that, law as law becomes superfluous; for what the law requires is the very thing we most desire to do: prophecy as prophecy is fulfilled; for the best man's heart can dream has come to pass.
In the ideal home, between well-married husband and wife, child and parent, brother and sister, this sweet law prevails. In choice circles of intimate friends it is found. Jesus extended this interpretation of others in terms of ourselves, and of both others and self in terms of the system of relations in which both self and others inhere, so as to include all the dealing of official and citizen, teacher and pupil, dealer and customer, employer and employee, man and man.
Jesus does not judge us by the formal test of whether we have kept or broken this or that specific commandment, but by the deeper and more searching requirement that our lives shall detract nothing from and add something to the glory of God and the welfare of man.
Is the world a happier, holier, better world because we are here in it, helping on God's good-will for men? If that be the grand, comprehensive purpose of our lives, honestly cherished, frankly avowed, systematically cultivated, then, no matter how far below perfection we may fall, that single purpose, in spite of failure, defeat, and repented sin, pulls us through. If we have this Spirit of Love in our hearts, and if with Christ's help we are trying to do something to make it real in our lives and effective in the world, our eternal salvation is assured. On the other hand, is there a single point on which we deliberately are working evil? Is the lot of any poor man harder, or the life of any unhappy woman more sad and bitter, for aught that we have done or left undone? Is any good institution the weaker, or any bad custom more prevalent, for aught that we are deliberately and persistently withholding of help or contributing of harm? If so, if in any one point we are consciously and unrepentingly arrayed against God's righteous purpose, and the human welfare which is dear to God; if there is a single point on which we are deliberately setting aside His righteous will, and doing intentional evil to the humblest of His children; then, notwithstanding our high rank on other matters, our lack of the right purpose, at even a single point, makes us guilty of the whole; we are unfit for His kingdom.
Jesus' principle of Love, though for clearness and incisiveness often stated in terms of mere altruism, or regard for others, yet taken in its total context, in the light of His never absent reference to the Father's will and the Kingdom of Heaven, is much deeper and broader than that. It gives each man his place and function in the total beneficent system which is the coming Kingdom of God, and then treats him not merely as he may wish to be treated, or we may wish to treat him, but as his place and function in that system require.
Mere altruism is often weakly kind, making others feebly dependent on our benefactions instead of sturdily self-supporting; making others unconsciously egotistic as the result of our superfluous ministrations or uncritical indulgence; and even fostering a subtle egotism in ourselves, as the result of the fatal habit of doing the easy, kind thing rather than the hard, severe thing that is needed to lift them to their highest attainment. A true mother is never half as sentimentally altruistic toward her child as a grandmother or an aunt; she does not hesitate to reprove and correct, when that is what the child needs to suppress the low and lazy, and rouse the higher and stronger self. The just administrator discharges the incompetent and exposes the dishonest employee, not merely because the good of the whole requires it; but because even for the person discharged or exposed, that is better than it would be to allow him to drag out an unprofitable and cumbersome life in tolerated uselessness or countenanced graft.