Micah 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy… These words, written so many hundred years ago, come home to our hearts as freshly as if they had been spoken yesterday. We also have been shown what is good, and we also should admit that no better description could be given of the goodness which our hearts recognise than "to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." Of course, it is true that through the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ we have a clearer knowledge of God's nature, and so a deeper insight into what He requires of us, than the people to whom Micah spoke. No modern equivalent of burnt offering or calves of a year old, not thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oil, no gift of churches, or communion plate, or musical instruments, or stained-glass windows, no, not even subscription to charity — nothing is good in the sight of God unless it carries with it the good will, the will to do justice and mercy. For today I do not propose to consider with you the abstract question as to what justice is, a question first asked in one of the most fascinating books in the world, The Republic of , and often enough asked since. I propose to follow the Jewish prophet in assuming that we have all been instructed in the Divine law, so that the great names of justice and mercy have a meaning to us, whether we can put that meaning into words or not. Assuming that, I wish to call your attention briefly to the necessary moral qualities which underlie the practice of these Christian virtues. The moral qualities necessary for all who aim at being just and merciful are three — courage, patience, sympathy. 1. Courage. Courage is plainly necessary; for what can it profit us to see the right course to take, if, through faint heartedness, we are unable to take it? No one can be just or merciful who cannot take his own line; who has not, as we say, "the courage of his opinions." 2. And then, patience — that is necessary. How much injustice in the world comes about because people will not take the trouble to investigate the case before them. In the abstract, in intention everybody is anxious to be just; everybody is eager to be merciful. But, unfortunately for us, the world is not an abstract world. It is very concrete, and it presents particular cases for the exercise of our virtue, and so our good intention counts for so little. If action on a great scale were required of us, we should all give a judgment that would be admirably just. But unfortunately, the decisions that are asked for from day to day are trifling decisions on everyday matters, and, in every instance, to come at the true facts of the case means spending time, means going into worrying details, and there is so much else to be done of so much importance. And so we become unjust, just for want of patience. 3. And then the man who would be just or merciful must have the power of putting himself in the place of another, and seeing the matter in all its circumstances from another's point of view; and that means that he must have a real interest in other people for their own sakes, and be able to understand them, and be able to see why they did what they did. Would it be too much to say that no one can be either just or merciful to those whom he does not love? I said that these three qualities of courage, patience, and sympathy are necessary, whether the work that we have to do is an act of justice or an act of mercy. And you will see that it is so when you recollect that that common distinction between justice and mercy is merely a practical distinction necessary for human infirmity, but not a distinction that goes down to the root of action. We might illustrate from any trial for murder. In a case of that sort we should consider that it was the province of justice to concern itself with the bare account of the crime alleged, and if that were proved sentence would be passed. And then it would be considered the part of mercy to come in and weigh the extenuating circumstances, and modify the sentence accordingly. But if justice means giving to every one his due, clearly mercy is still more due to the criminal than what we called first justice. The extenuating circumstances are a very real part of the action. Or again, suppose that some one in our employment has abused our confidence. A clerk has stolen money to pay his gambling debts. Well, his employer, if he were a just man, in deciding whether to prosecute his clerk or not to prosecute him, would decide on the whole circumstances, and he would do what he thought best in the interests of the clerk. If he thought imprisonment likely to have the most salutary effect on the man's character he would prosecute, and in that case prosecution would be mercy as well as justice. We can see this, of course, most plainly in God's dealings with us. We can see. I mean, that justice and mercy are only two sides of the same thing. We know God gives us in all the circumstances of life what He sees to be best for us. We may sometimes call what He sends us a judgment, and sometimes we may call it a mercy, and all the time we know that the judgment as much as the mercy proceeds from His love proceeds from His knowledge of our real need; so that His justice is mercy in being what is best for us, and His mercy is justice, because that best is our due as being His children. Now, that is our ideal — a mercy that shall be justice, a justice that shall be mercy. Let us, then, do justice, let us love mercy, as becometh saints. And then for that third requirement. That, we know, is a pre-condition of the other two — to walk humbly with God." If the other two gave the substance of saintship, surely this gives the secret — "to walk humbly with God." It is a strange expression, and the rendering in the margin of the Bible is stranger still: "Humble thyself to walk with God." Surely, if we had a vision of God as Moses or Isaiah, we should veil our faces and fall in the dust. Why should we need humility to walk with God? Indeed. it is a question well worth asking, Why are we so often ashamed to obey the promptings of God's voice speaking in conscience? Why are we so often ashamed to be just, ashamed to be merciful, ashamed in society of defending an unpopular person, ashamed in politics of defending an unpopular cause, fearing to be righteous overmuch, to be merciful overmuch? May God give us enough humility to accept His Almighty guidance through this world — humility enough to be on the lookout for the way that He has prepared for us to walk in; and may He give us all the courage and the patience and the sympathy necessary for our task whatever it may prove to be. (H. C. Beeching.) Parallel Verses KJV: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? |
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