Matthew 22:30-40 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.… In the present day there are three classes of men who are disposed to confine the idea of duty to our relations with our fellow-men; either because they absolutely deny the existence of God, or because they think that nothing can be known about Him, or because they hold that there is something anthropomorphic about the idea of duty altogether, and therefore it is idle to speak of duty on the part of feeble creatures such as we are, towards the absolute and the infinite. One class consists of those in whom the spiritual organ is defective; the second of those who cannot believe without strict logical proof, and find a stumbling-block in the demand for faith; while a third consists of those who are repelled by moral difficulties. All these classes join to swell the tide of secularism. "To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself" constitutes the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. Still the question remains, Is the rule here given sufficient in itself; can the second commandment stand thus isolated? Is it enough that a man should do to others as he would wish them to do to him? Does it necessarily lead to virtue? Take the example of a sensualist: what he wishes to have done is to have his appetites gratified, to be spared all self-denial. To act towards others as he would wish them to act towards him, might lead to the worst consequences. Also what is the " love" of the sensualist, and what is the "self" which he loves. He loves the lower self in himself and in others. You must be sure that the man who loves you rightly loves himself. You must in short rise to the ideal that should be. In this there is a transcending the matter-of-fact rule — "Do as you would be done by." But how and where is the ideal to be found. Is it a fancy, in nature, art, poetry? The dullest life offers some foothold for the God-given faculties of admiration, imagination, and affection. The beauties of nature are tokens of an existence outside ourselves, infinite in power and wisdom, sympathising with every higher feeling of the heart. This is confirmed by our own experience of life. The first dawn of consciousness reveals to us a mother's unselfish devotion. We learn to appreciate the thoughtful justice of a father; watching the world we come to feel that we are in the midst of " a stream of tendency which makes for righteousness," and we see its effects on a large scale in the rise and fall of nations. Here then we find the right interpretation of the rule, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." It is love the ideal in thy neighbour as thou lovest it in thyself. And to thin end we must keep our eyes open to the ideal in others. See your friend glorified, as what he may be by God's grace. And now we have seen the Ideal at work both in life and in nature, we may take a further step, and ask whether there is any other name under which it is known to us. Two heathen philosophers shall furnish us with an answer. All lower ideals, says Plato, are summed up in one highest Ideal, the perfection of beauty and goodness. This Ideal is to the world of mind what the sun is to the world of matter, the fountain of life and light. Love is the yearning after this Ideal, at first a dim unconscious yearning, but as it grows in purity it comes to discern its object more clearly, until at length it beholds it face to face, and then there is heaven. For this ideal is God, the Author of the universe, the Father of each individual soul. And Seneca shall tell us what is the ideal nature formed within each: — sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, "a holy spirit dwells within us;" and again, prope est ad te deus, tecum est, intus est, "God is near you, He is with you, He is in you." Need I remind you that the same truth is proclaimed by the voice of revelation — "In Him we live and move and have our being;" "The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead;" "In Him was life and the life was the light of men;" "That was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Once only has the perfect Ideal of man been seen on earth, and that Ideal was one with the Father; the ideal can be formed in each one of us only by the Spirit of Christ within us. "Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, so neither can ye except ye abide in Me;" "If Christ be in you the spirit is life because of righteousness." Here then we may advance to a further definition of our rule. When we say, "Love the ideal in thy neighbour," we mean as we now see, "Love that which is Christ-like, that which is God-like in thy neighbour." The natural object of love, as Plato has taught us, is the Divine perfection. That we are to love; that, in so far as our heart is in its right state, we cannot help loving, with all our soul and all our strength; all other things we shall love in so far as they embody or represent to us any portion of the Divine perfection. Thus the second commandment is like unto the first, because it is, in fact, an exemplification of it in one direction, just as we might have another exemplification, bidding us love and admire all the beauty and sublimity of outward nature, or, as our Lord bids, "Consider the lilies of the field." The lessons, then, which we should draw from the consideration of the close connection between the first and the second commandments are mainly two. One is, to suspect all religious emotions in ourselves which do not tend to increase our love for our fellow-men. "Pure religion and undefiled," says St. James, "is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." If our religion fails to do this, whatever ecstatic heights we may seem to soar to, it is mere self-deception; such religion is vain. The other is that on which we have already dwelt so much, that we are to love our fellow-men in God, as created by God, as redeemed by Christ, as called to be .temples of the Holy Spirit, as all having in them the germ of a new and Divine life, which it is the privilege and the duty of human love to cherish and to strengthen, until at last the whole body of the Church, "being fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ." (J. B. Mayor, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. |
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